Benoit Robillard Photography: KISSed : A tribute to KISS

Le Club Soda - Montreal
with Rusted (opening act)

Photo set of the band KISSed, a Montreal based KISS tribute band.

Being a KISS fan since the age of 9 (1979), I simply could not miss this opportunity to shoot the band KISSed, a tribute to KISS. I've had the chance to see the real KISS only once in my life and KISSed sure delivered the goods. It was a great concert indeed and a night to remember.

KISSed Tribute

The band began performing together as KISSed in 2008. Band members are Stéphane Mackay on bass (as Gene Simmons’ Demon character), François Gagné (as Paul Stanley’s Starchild character), David Brazeau (as Ace Frehley/Tommy Thayer’s Spaceman) and Eric Major (as Peter Criss/Eric Singer’s Catman). The concert took place at Le Club Soda on Friday, January 25, 2013. The Montreal band Rusted warmed up the crowd.

Le Club Soda has a nice mezzanine/balcony that is accessible on nights with larger crowds. It's the ideal spot to take pictures from. But on nights with smaller crowds, the second floor is closed to the public. Security was nice enough to grant me access for the show.

All these pictures were shot with a Pentax K-5 DSLR mounted with a smc Pentax-DA* 50-135mm F2.8 ED [IF] SDM lens. Photo editing was done in Adobe Lightroom.

A look at the stage before the show.

François Gagné as Paul Stanley’s “Starchild” character.

Stéphane Mackay, as Gene Simmons’ the “Demon” character.

David Brazeau as Ace Frehley/Tommy Thayer’s “Spaceman”.

Eric Major as Peter Criss/Eric Singer’s “Catman”.

(Above) This is one of the few pictures that was shot with a Sigma 17-50mm F2.8 EX DC OS HSM lens. The auto focus is not very accurate in low light with this lens so I don't use it that much. I normally use it in the manual focus mode when I take it out of the bag in low light shootings such as this. This picture was shot at 1/125 sec at f / 3.2, ISO 1600 at 50mm. Shake reduction (SR) was ON.