Experimenting

I recently came across some event photos taken recently at a local club by photographer, Kyle Hendrix. He had taken photos in a way I never thought to for events and I was curious to find out how he did it. He never did get back to me with all of the details but I was surprised when he told me how long he "dragged" out the shutter speed, sometimes to over 1 second. Knowing the space he was shooting in, it explained why he was able to get the background to look the way it did and his flash(s) took care of the subject matter just great. The rest of the look, I'm assuming, was done while post processing.

So last Friday night while shooting for Metromix, I decided to experiment a little. So I kept my ISO down to about 500 (which can be low at the Red Barn) and set the time to about one second, aperture at around f/10 (which is REALLY small for the Red Barn) and snapped a few. Well, I'm sure shooting a portrait of people standing still would great but when you're photographing musicians who are all over the place... not so good. I of course got the ghosting I expected but I did get a little bit of a sharp subject matter. I didn't give up there though. I had always wanted to try a zooming technique. Basically, as the shutter is opened, I would change the zoom. Well all I have to say is, "way cool", especially when you have neon lights behind your subject! That's how I got the photo of "D" singing.

The next photo is "Mondo". I'm posting that here because, while I didn't deviate to much from my usual shooting style, I did have the shutter set at 1/10 of a second, where normally I'm at about 1/60th.

This allowed me to catch the ambient light behind him nicely. What I really like about this photo though is that I feel I captured "Mondo". He's got that big smile on his face and it's genuine. He loves performing and B Movie Superstars as a whole love being on the stage and singing their hearts out. The last photo is Martin, their lead guitarist. Here's a guy who would never look up while playing and when he does and I've got the camera ready... lol. I get the meanest looks but it's all in good fun (I like to think we're pretty good friends).

By the end of the night I already had what I needed for Metromix so I decided to have some fun and pulled the flash off the camera and attach the wireless trigger. I shoot with a Gary Fong Origami Fold Flat Diffuser attached to my flash and held the flash pointed so that the diffuser reflected light up towards Martin and slightly towards the wall. So even though the light was primarily an up-light, the wall acted as a reflector and filled in nicely from the side, still giving me the shadows I wanted on his right side.

Here are the rest of the photos from that night. The very first photo is an example of the first technique I tried.

Take care for now.
-A

-B Movie Superstars website-

Color me this...

At the end of last month I photographed a Hip-Hop show at The Point After in Cathedral City, Ca. The venue has a slightly elevated dinning area for a stage and does not have any type of stage lighting. I've photographed at this space one other time and knew the challenges that were ahead of me. I decided to take another crack at using saturate theatrical gels on the flash (you can find my first attempt here).

This time around, there was enough ambient light to see what color I was putting onto the flash and easily get rid of the one's I didn't like. Here are samples of what I ended up with. There is no editing to the photo other than minor adjustments to levels (Exposure, Recovery, Fill, Blacks, Brightness, and contrast). All colors were Apollo Gel from Apollo Design Technology, inc.


Purple - A Favorite (it also results in good black and white conversions)


Yellow - Another Favorite


Amber


Cyan - Ehh... Not too bad


Blue - was really a hard read and I did adjust how the color was translated.


Blue to Black & White Conversion.


Red - I think. Red was a hard color to work with but I haven't given up on it yet.


Green!

There are plenty more colors for me to try in the future and as I try them, I'll share them with you.

Take care for now!
-Anthony