I got to photograph the Japanese rock band “born”in Houston Texas on Halloween weekend of 2009.

I was scheduled to shoot the show for JRockRevolution.com and all the press credentials had been set up ahead of time. I would be covering this along with a press conference by another Japanese musician.

The concert would be taking place at an anime convention so I was expecting fairly bad conditions. They generally take place in a hotel and will use a ballroom for the concerts with rented sound and lighting. This is an easy place for cons to cut costs so the lighting and sound is often sub par. As a general rule I prefer to photograph bands in a venue that is designed specifically for concerts.

After arriving at the venue I met with my contact at the record label then went to pick up the press credentials. The staff had no record of us and it took a bit of convincing to get my press pass then while being escorted to the concert location I fell in the hotel kitchen injuring my knee. Once we got to the room where the concert would actually take place I was told that I would not be allowed to photograph the show as I had not been approved by the band’s japanese management. It had been the USA branch of the label that had approved me and they had not cleared it with their Japanese counterparts. To top things off my contact with the label was with the band and unable to be contacted. I did get cleared to photograph the two opening American bands and after a few phone calls finally got the clearance to shoot “born” shortly before the start of the show. Japanese intellectual property laws are a bit more intricate than the American ones and Japanese record labels tend to be a lot pickier about who they will let photograph bands and what they are allowed to do with the images.

As predicted the room for the concerts was a hotel ballroom but unexpectedly they had invested a lot of money in the sound and lighting systems. As you can see in the images the lighting was really top notch, better than most of the venues where I normally photograph bands and a lot better than the two Dir En Grey shows that I would photograph in the following weeks.

The convention had set up a large photo pit at the front of the stage and by the time the show started I was sharing it with a couple of others that had made it onto the press list.

When the band finally hit the stage I sprung into action unsure if I would get to photograph just the first three songs or the whole show. It turned out to be the whole show which really took its toll on my already injured knee but was fortunate as it took the band a few songs to really hit their stride. Once they hit their stride though they really went full steam. They had more energy than any band I had seen in months and it was infectious with the crowd.

Fairly late in the show the lead singer jumped down into the photo pit and would kick the restraining wall that holds the crowd back. It seemed odd at first but later I figured out that he was actually measuring the distance from the stage to the crowd. After getting back on the stage he took a running start and dove into the crowd. Before long all the members of the band were taking turns doing this same thing.

You will notice in the background of the above image one of the band members launching himself across the photo pit into the audience.

href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/watsonsinelgin/4388404221/” title=”born by watsonsinelgin, on Flickr”>

You can find out more about “born” at www.myspace.com/bornjp