Sardonyx High School Rock Challenge 2012

So, about a year ago, I photographed Sardonyx Production's first High School Rock Challenge.  (See photos from that here).  I was asked to come shoot again a few weeks ago, which I did with pleasure.  This year elena dee photography was even a sponser!  The winning band gets a free promo shoot.   It's pretty nifty and I'm definitely excited to work with the winner, and hopefully a couple of the other bands - some of them were awesome!  I am disappointed in Diesel's lighting this time around though, as I know that they have a fantastic system and they only used blue gels the entire night.  It was way too boring for a battle of the bands.  But I got some cool black and white conversions, and I love b&w anyway, so it worked out.  On to the exciting stuff: the photos!


The 1st band was Half 'n' Half.  They were a pretty decent rock band.

Next up was Lucky Strikes.  I rather liked them.  If I recall, they were a hard rock/metal sort of band.  At the very least, the drummer had a sweet Sex Pistols shirt and he gets points for that.

Mike (owner of Sardonyx) sitting between two colleagues.

Wendigo, a sort of punk ish band.   I got really excited when they started because the girl said they were going to do a song by The Distillers (one of my favorite bands) but then they honestly didn't do a very good cover so I was rather bummed out.

From the Ashes was a pretty sweet metal band, I really liked them.  They were one of my favorites of the night.

The Options were almost country, but I surprisingly quite liked them, and the judges did too, because they won!  She has an excellent voice.  We're going to set a promo shoot for the band, I'm definitely excited.

Second Empire - winners from last year.  As I may have mentioned last time, I really enjoy them.

Split Resistance I think came in second.  They were an interesting sound, almost jazzy metal.  Their drummer is insanely fast, I could hardly get a picture!

Restricted Highways.  Not sure how I felt about the vocals, but they were pretty decent.  The bassist's Christmas sweater was pretty ridiculous.

KEVLAR was the winner of the Erie High School Rock Challenge and came to play the Pittsburgh show while the judges debated the winners.  They were pretty sweet, definitely deserved to be winners!