My friends, The Tractormen, opened up a Tuesday night at the Soda Bar. Each one of them is a class act, taking my feeble attempts at flash in stride.



I'm not convinced it looks better than ambient. Sure, it's easier to illuminate a subject with a flash, but it seems to require converting to B&W in order to look good. I kept my shutter speeds slow to let in the usual amount of ambient, the flash just acting as a fill.



 I turned it off after a couple songs- and am now  99% convinced that flash is just not my thing. It's just too... forensic.



It's so much better with shadows.





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Brawley filled up the bar with honky tonkers and cowboys. I had no idea there were so many of them in this part of town.





I wanted to give them a bit of a dusty saloon vibe with the color and processing. The dancers kept things lively, especially for me trying to stay out of their way while shooting. I wasn't ready for a rodeo.



Nena Anderson doesn't have a bad angle, even if I have bad focus.





But the real star of the show is Dave, the pedal steel player. He can make that thing sing and cry at the same time.





I would have liked to stick around for more than one song from the Derailers, but it was a Tuesday night, and I had to be up early  travel to another podunk desert outpost and save some townsfolk from themselves, very figuratively speaking. With Brawley still ringing in my ears, I felt like I was ready to wrangle some outlaws and ride off into the sunset.

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