2 months ago

• Gio and David Padilla at the Mix Reunion Party • Remember when DJs used vinyl and had little to no mixing aids? Even a BPM counter was considered anathema. It was a sincere pleasure to see and photograph the Mix Reunion event a week or so ago. The Mix was the last “afterhours” joint on Miami Beach. Many of the world’s most successful DJs played their first US gig there, including Tiësto, Paul Van Dyk, and more. It was also the first location of my first-ever nightclub shooting expedition. Loaded with six rolls of Fujicolor Press 400 and an Olympus OM-4, it was ostensibly for a photo class over at UM. Intermediate Color Photography (ART 3??) or something like that. Yes, film, and I had to print my own prints. I was a regular attendee of The Mix but this was the first time I ever braved a full-on nightclub with my camera equipment. And the Mix was notorious for saying “No”, and then “No” once again to anyone who asked to shoot, outside of Miami’s established shooters, which at the time, I was not. (Sidebar: it takes time to get established, a fancy camera and a Facebook page aren’t enough…) But one of my friends at the time (Andrae, now the owner of Facet Media) knew Gio the manager, and persuaded him to let me come in and take a few images. Looking back, the end results were middling at best, but I did walk away with one “classic”. Yep, on film, and I didn’t scan it in from a negative for a few years. My initial output was using a color enlarger, a cranky RA-4 processor, and Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, which is still the best photo paper around. Nothing in the world beats an R-print or a Cibacrome. Epson be damned. Go find a lab with a Lambda or Frontier to output your digital files to traditional photo paper. But anyway, it was my first shoot. Analog top to bottom. David Padilla was only playing vinyl, CDs weren’t allowed. And the mixer was a classic UREI analog unit, and all the amps were analog too, feeding a monstrous multi-brand (JBL & EAW) speaker array, and you could sit inside the subs, they were so big.  It was quite quirky, and people actually dug the idea of being photographed in a club. From there I was hooked… So it was really cool to see the old crowd back together for a little reunion. A few missing faces, but the music and crowd bought back a lot of memories.  Click on the photo of David and Gio to check the results from the Reunion. 

• Gio and David Padilla at the Mix Reunion Party •

Remember when DJs used vinyl and had little to no mixing aids? Even a BPM counter was considered anathema. It was a sincere pleasure to see and photograph the Mix Reunion event a week or so ago. The Mix was the last “afterhours” joint on Miami Beach. Many of the world’s most successful DJs played their first US gig there, including Tiësto, Paul Van Dyk, and more.

It was also the first location of my first-ever nightclub shooting expedition. Loaded with six rolls of Fujicolor Press 400 and an Olympus OM-4, it was ostensibly for a photo class over at UM. Intermediate Color Photography (ART 3??) or something like that. Yes, film, and I had to print my own prints. I was a regular attendee of The Mix but this was the first time I ever braved a full-on nightclub with my camera equipment. And the Mix was notorious for saying “No”, and then “No” once again to anyone who asked to shoot, outside of Miami’s established shooters, which at the time, I was not. (Sidebar: it takes time to get established, a fancy camera and a Facebook page aren’t enough…) But one of my friends at the time (Andrae, now the owner of Facet Media) knew Gio the manager, and persuaded him to let me come in and take a few images.

Looking back, the end results were middling at best, but I did walk away with one “classic”.

Yep, on film, and I didn’t scan it in from a negative for a few years. My initial output was using a color enlarger, a cranky RA-4 processor, and Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, which is still the best photo paper around. Nothing in the world beats an R-print or a Cibacrome. Epson be damned. Go find a lab with a Lambda or Frontier to output your digital files to traditional photo paper.

But anyway, it was my first shoot. Analog top to bottom. David Padilla was only playing vinyl, CDs weren’t allowed. And the mixer was a classic UREI analog unit, and all the amps were analog too, feeding a monstrous multi-brand (JBL & EAW) speaker array, and you could sit inside the subs, they were so big. 

It was quite quirky, and people actually dug the idea of being photographed in a club. From there I was hooked…

So it was really cool to see the old crowd back together for a little reunion. A few missing faces, but the music and crowd bought back a lot of memories. 

Click on the photo of David and Gio to check the results from the Reunion.