The Blog

Well the Cool Tour came by the House of Blues last night. There were a bunch of bands, and I’ll show a photo or two of each below but first..a rant….

You’re given a photo-pass for a concert because you’re shooting it for a reason. It’s for a publication, the publication you work for. If you’re working for a publication as a photographer, it’s assumed you’re a decent photographer at minimum. If you’re in the “photo-pit” with a point and shoot camera, you need to get the hell out. Not only are you poorly equipped, you also have no idea what you’re doing. Second, if you’re in the pit, with your point shoot, and you’re dancing and singing along to every song…there is a major problem. We get 3 songs at most to shoot. You have plenty of time after to do that stupid crap. You’re in my way and making it difficult for me to do what I need to and am paid to do. Also, don’t wear flip-flops in the pit, you moron. /rant

Anyways…

As I Lay Dying

Underoath

Between The Buried And Me

The Acacia Strain

Blessthefall

The Architects

Cancer Bats

I’m not sure who reads this, but I haven’t been keeping up with it. I have a back injury at the moment so I shall update this soon.

Well I guess I’ve gone from one extreme to the other. I had the opportunity..if you want to call it that..to shoot GWAR. GWAR is like a death metal band that wears these ridiculous costumes and puts on an interesting show. They kill people on stage, spray everyone with fake blood and other things. It’s definitely not an ideal shooting situation for us photographers. The staff at the House of Blues was allowed to wear whatever clothes they wanted to that night as well, if that tells you anything of what to expect.

I only spent 3 songs in the pit between the stage and barricade, and I came out a complete (fake) bloody mess. The Red Sox game next to the HoB had just got out when I was leaving, and it was fun explaining why I looked like this to 100’s of people.

Anyways, here are the photos of GWAR…

Haha, anyways. I was asked to photograph “The Backstreet Boys” and I was not sure what to say. I thought they were all dead honestly. Anyways, I decided to give it a go for kicks. I only stayed for the first two songs, and I couldn’t stand the screaming girls (and a few guys). Anyways, here are some photos of the famed Backstreet Boys playing at the Bank of America Pavilion in Boston.

We’re finally home from our epic trip around the world. It was great and we made it back without any problems!

Day 2 we went out on another tour. We stopped at the Trevi Fountain first.

They get about 400,000 euro out of that fountain each year.

Then we walked through a local market/artist are which was very nice. The architecture in Rome is just amazing. The next building we saw was the Parliament Building.

After that we headed to the Pantheon, which is a huge church like building, which has the biggest dome in the world. The doors weigh 6 tons also.

Then our tour took us back to Vatican City to see St. Peters again. It was nice to see it again.

Well the day started with a nice breakfast at our hotel, and then we decided that instead of taking a guided tour to Vatican City, we would do it on our own. We figured out the subway system, and made it there. Their subway trains are nicer than the ones we have in Boston, but the subway stations are far worse than ours. Super dark, and they smell pretty horrible.

The Vatican was very crowded. St. Peters Basilica had a huge line to get to it, but it moved a lot quicker than I was thinking it would.

After waiting in the line, we obviously went into St. Peters, and it was pretty amazing.

After that we walked a bit to the Vatican Museum, which, along with many other amazing pieces or art, it houses the Sistine Chapel. The ceilings of every room were so ornate. After a while you hardly even think twice about how much work went into making them.

After that we headed back to Rome to get on a organized tour. First stop was ‘Capitol Hill.’

Then a little bit down the road, we went to a lookout point over the Roman Ruins.

Just up the street was the church “Saint Peter in Chains.” The chains he was put in are kept there on display.

The last stop of the day was at the Colosseum.

Well I managed to finally upload my Africa photos to my website. The internet here in Rome is (marginally) better than the internet we had in Africa… here is a link

http://scotteisenphotography.smugmug.com/Travel/southafrica/

Well we made the somewhat ‘epic’ journey from the middle of nowhere South Africa to Rome, Italy. The trip started out around 12PM Wednesday. We got in a tiny trucked headed for Richard’s Bay Airport, which should be 2 hours from where we were on safari. An hour into the car trip, my dad decided we needed to go to an African market to get some clay ’sunscreen.’ This was a market straight out of a Hollywood movie and I did not feel safe at all.

We made it out of the market it fine, but about 15 minutes down the road we started to smell some burning rubber, and smoke was coming out of the car hood. The air-conditioning belt was not working right and starting to smoke. We ended up cutting it off of the engine, and make our way to the airport.

We had a short 1 hour flight to Johannesburg, which went 100% okay. We had to go back through security again. We were flying on Iberia airlines to Madrid. A short TEN hour flight. Unfortunately, Iberia is the worst airline on the planet, and there were a lot of problems boarding the plane. We boarded, did the long flight, and made it to Madrid about 45 minutes late.

We had to go through customs, and then back through security again at Madrid airport, for another flight on the horrid Iberia airlines. This flight boarded 20 minutes late, and then once we were all on the plane, it was delayed another hour. Awesome!

Once we landed it took awhile for our bags to come out, and we found our driver, and now here I am, at our hotel in Rome, typing this post. Wooooo.

We had 2 last drives today. We first went out with a different guide in the morning because our guide had another commitment to make. We saw the rhinos again, as well as the baby. The mother white rhino got pretty mad at us and charged our vehicle. Pretty scary. Then we found the 2 male cheetahs again.

After the morning, our guide was back and we went out. While we were driving at the far end of the reserve I saw something that looked like a dead impalla. Indeed it was, but it was being swallowed by a 10 foot African Rock Python.