I was trawling through the Red Bat archives, looking for interesting shots for our portfolio, when I happened to find Patrick’s Proof Bar sets from 2007. He visited the Santa Ana nightspot several times in May and July and got pictures of people dancing to beats laid down by DJ DAUS, aka his friend Darius. This two-minute slideshow uses excerpts from a DAUS track and photos by Patrick, and proves that it’s possible to get great shots in a dark nightclub.

DAUS is the hottie in the Pink Floyd t-shirt. His tracks can be found at www.daustek.com.

What with the photos and all, this post is a long one, so get ready.

Last week, the Red Bats packed up the Batmobile and drove down to LA, where Ambrosio Dinero was waiting to have portraits taken, and Patrick’s friend Darius was to be our guide. Our first shooting location was downtown LA, but before we could get started, we were accosted by the promotional team for Rave Story. Here they are telling Darius all about it, and prepping us to say “RAVE STORY!” for their video cameras.

After that brief and highly amusing delay, we got on with the shooting. Darius knew all the best places to go to get that gritty, urban feeling in our photos. I thought it was great fun to be driving around a place I’d never been before and pulling over to set up shots under a bridge or in front of a tall building. Photography on location is a blast.

Patrick thought so too.

Then Darius showed off his ability to talk his way into any venue by persuading a waitress to let us shoot inside this restaurant/bar before it opened for the night. Once inside, we had cocktails; mine involved sake and tea, and tasted very strange. The back room turned out to be a great place for shooting.

Eventually we were done working, and it was time to drive around and look at stuff. I didn’t actually see anything exciting though.

Back at the hotel, we took pictures of ourselves and waited for Darius to finish giving complicated directions to a mysterious female so we could all get going and find the Thai restaurant he kept talking about.

I was nearly faint with hunger when I took this photo in line outside the Thai restaurant. I swore then never to go on a trip without lots of snacks in my bag. Patrick doesn’t show it here, but he’s famished too.

The next morning we had another long wait, this time in a line of cars. This was my first experience of traffic in LA, and it helped me understand why Patrick was so happy to move away from that city. After navigating our way out of there, we stopped at Patrick’s childhood home. This place was a plant nursery when he lived there. Now it’s empty.

For a few minutes, we contemplated the passing of time and how all things change, etc. Then went next door to Ostrich Land, where tall aggressive birds erased all melancholy from our hearts.

To celebrate the success of our first Red Bat overnight road trip, we feasted on gourmet pizza at Los Olivos Cafe, where a man at a neighboring table struck up a conversation with us. We told him we were a team of photographers, and of course then he wanted to take our picture. I was extremely hesitant to put my camera in a stranger’s hands, but he insisted and I gave in. And he didn’t do badly at all.

A toast to the long life of Red Bat Photography!