You know what I haven't done in bloody ages? Post any pictures in this thread. I haven't been shooting as much as I'd like to be, but I have worked a few large gigs. Back in Feburary, I helped set up and run lights at the Palladium in Worcester. The headliner was the UK dubstep DJ Rusko. He's credited as being the inventor of the super-distorted "brostep" sound, and his DJ set, uh, lived up to his reputation. Even with 35dB earplugs, it was painful.
On the other hand, the lights I got to work with were pretty insane. We rented eight Clay Paky "Sharpy" beam effect lights. Clay Paky is Italian, and the Lamborghini (and the Mercedes) of the lighting world. Founded in 1976, they have pioneered many new designs and make by far the most expensive (and arguably the best) products in the industry. The Sharpies cost $7500 each and run on 3-phase AC. Their effect was amazing. They also briefly set the stage on fire. I'm not joking. There's are warning signs all over the light stating that nothing can be within 12 meters of the front lens, and one of the idiot stage hands turn turned two on when they were maybe two feet off stage, and pointing straight down. Sadly(?) I did not get a picture of the stage boards smoking.
It was a long and difficult gig, but it was fun to work with such amazing luminaries. That's what lights are called when they cost that much, sort of like the difference between an whatnot and an etagere. Besides the Sharpies, we had four 1200W strobes, two confetti launchers and a CO2 array that made big momentary clouds over the crowd. It looked a bit like a bomb went off.
Six of the Sharpies as well as four "regular" moving head scanners.
The moving heads we used cost 1/5 the price of the Sharpies, but they held their own pretty well.
The promoter was insistent that we didn't turn on the Sharpies until Rusko's took the stage, so I took most of my pictures during his set.
The Palladium is an old theatre, and its architecture does a beautiful job framing the lights.
Using a few of the club's PAR64 cans as blinders moments after the CO2 launchers went off.
Even with four 1200W strobes going off, the impact of the Sharpie's beams is hardly diminished.
Just after we triggered the confetti launchers.
All of these pictures except for the last one were taken with my humble PowerShot S95. I used my 30D and EF 50mm F/1.4 for the closeup of Rusko. I shot full manual throughout. Click through for EXIF info.
A clip showing the four moving heads in action. You can see the 3-facet prism flipping in to make it look like we had more lights mounted than we actually did. Warning, the music is awful. It only got worse (and LOUDER) as the night wore on. I had to use YouTube because Flickr videos won't embed.