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Today is the day after one of the biggest moments in my life. I proposed to my girlfriend of over two years. I don't like to brag but I think I pulled it off very well with a nice romantic stroll across the Brooklyn Bridge a drop to one knee and then the question. I think she was pretty happy, as I am.




Taken by a random couple that happened to be standing nearby. I walked up and asked "Can you please take a picture of me and my new fiance". Their response was "aw, when did you get engaged?" to which I replied "two minutes ago". I think they were just as surprised as Monica.


This is a random un-touched photo I took while Monica made a 'few' phone calls.

Adventure Time!

I'm off! Well, actually, I've arrived already... to NYC that is. I'm on a little vacation get away to visit family, friends, and the city I love and used to call home, New York City. It's day one and I've just finished uploading my last Metromix assignment, the "Move" party at Dink's Ultra-Lounge. The point of the trip is to get some rest and have some fun so I'm not sure if yet if I'm going to post photos while here. Here is one photo though from last Friday's party. You can find more HERE. There will be more posted on the Palm Springs Metromix site on Monday.

What's going on?

So I've been busy. What does that mean? I'm a little behind where I would like to be as far as uploading new photos.

So just to keep you posted if you're looking for photos.
*I'm uploading photos of the 6/20/09 Eeka Mouse Concert to Metromix. They typically will have them posted on their website by the following Monday. I'll have even more photos from the concert posted on my website within the next few days.
*6/12/09 Red Barn Show (Wyte Gye & Roads of Rome), I'm pretty close to having those posted.
*6/7/09 Encore Car Show. Haven't even started but I'm sure I have some good photos in there.
There's more but I tend to do the most recent first and then work backwards to catch up. Paying jobs of course go first and the photos I shoot for me follow.

There's plenty to see on the site now so Thank You for your patience!
-Anthony

Here is some samples of recent work...

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

Mmm Mmm Good!

I had the pleasure of dining out with my lovely girlfriend a few weeks ago at Copley's On Palm Canyon located in downtown Palm Springs. The restaurant was having their annual "A Taste of Hawaii" themed evening and I just happened to have my camera with me. You can find the pictures here but I just had to share a few of the food photos I took. It still makes my mouth water.

Rock & Roll

My recent Metromix adventures gave me the opportunity to photograph the bands Staind & Hoobastank at Spotlight 29 Casino in Coachella, CA. The evening started with taking photos of concert goers as they entered the show room before the concert. Once the show began, I was allowed to take photos of each band for the first three songs. I'm not exactly sure why the bands limit how long we photographers can shoot but one theory I have is that they don't want us photographers in the way of the audience for the entire concert.

So what to do when you have such limited time? At this point a little experience helps. I've been shooting concerts, usually from a good distance back because I'm usually running a lighting console at the same time, for a few years now. What I do is set the camera in manual mode, the metering mode to Spot and open up my aperture to the max, which for my primary lens is (28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS) is F/3.5 at its widest setting. I try to keep the ISO to no more than 800 but will bring it up to 1600 and sometimes 3200 (but it gets a little to noisy for me). My shutter speed varies depending on the lighting but I try and keep it faster than 1/60 of a second. Images Stabilization is definitely on and makes a big difference. One important setting is your drive should be set to High. Even though I usually have the shot in mind, by having the drive set to high, I can press and hold the shutter down to take a few rapid shots. The first shot may be blurry because the camera WILL shake a little when you first press the shutter button down but the second and third will probably be ok and the last show may be blurry as you remove your finger from the shutter.

For this concert, I went back and forth between my 28-135mm and 70-200mm f2.8L IS lenses but in the end I preferred the wider zoom since I was so close and I was happier with what I was seeing in the view finder. I did try aperture priority mode but what happens is since the lighting is constantly changing, if you meter point hits a dark spot, it will slow the shutter speed down WAY to much and you will actually end up with an over exposed image that's also blurry. I recommend playing with ISO and shutter speeds to see the different results you can end up with. I'll crank the ISO up to 1600 when I need to get the shutter speed up (if I'm not using my monopod) and also when I want to get a little more background into the photo. You can find more photos of the concert at the main Staind & Hoobastank Photogallery.

I really like this photograph of Staind Bassist Johnny April (f/4.5, 1/1250, ISO 800 & a little Light Room Love).

The back story...

I've been a Lighting Designer for almost 15 years now having started back in high school when I joined with Stage Crew.

Originally, I was an aspiring photo journalist and had even become the high school's youngest Photo Editor, taking the position in my freshman year (the position was usually reserved for seniors). I had really gotten into photography and obtained my first SLR, a Pentax K1000 and a few lenses. I had no direction and no real idea to what I was doing other than understanding how to get a good exposure.

One day, I was asked to sign a piece of paper by the art department head, Mr. Lopez, who was the Stage Crew advisor. Little did I know, by signing that paper, the course of my life changed dramatically. I had instantly become an officer of the Stage Crew club. I was intensely involved from that point on. I typically handled audio for sporting event but in the theater, I was responsible for lighting events and productions. I taught myself through reading by observing the occasional proffesional that came through and just having a natural understanding of lighting. I was drawn to how controling the light for a play or musical could evoke emotion or create the mood for the scene. I became passionate about lighting. What a happy day to discover I could make a living playing with light!

So after much research and traveling to colleges in the North East, I ended up in the South East where I attended the then called "North Carolina School of the Arts" (now called The University of North Carolina School of the Arts). I could not have been happier. For four years, I studied Design and Production for theater, specializing in Lighting Design. My freshman year my love for lighting was cemented in a simple dance solo for the all school production of Brigadoon. The lighting that was done to highten the emotion of the solo (which was a dance for mourning) just struck me in such a way that connected with me.

Fast forward to today. I left the theater and NYC in 2001 to try my hand in the corporate world. It, for a time, allowed me creative freedom with a little more budget and a good learning experience. After 8 years and a few cycles of different types of production work, we've mostly been doing rock and roll. The acts have been getting bigger and typically, the bigger acts have bring their own designers. This leaves me with the simple job of providing the requested parts, hanging up in the air and twiddling my thumbs on the side lines ready to pounce if there is a problem. Boring.

Last year I fell in love with photography all over again. I purchased my Canon 40D and never looked back. This time I'm armed with my design training and a greater appreciation of light. I'm also continuosly learning something new everyday so it keeps photography fresh for me. Last night I attended a seminar, Digital Wakeup Call with photographer David Ziser (check out his Digital Pro Talk Blog ). I found it to be very insightful and educational. There were a lot of "a huh" moments for me and I would recommend the seminar to anyone (both pro and ameture). My head was spinning with ideas the entire one and a half hour drive home.

One of his suggestions was to blog and to blog often. So I'm going to make more of an effort to do so. Today's post was just to give my audience a little back story to how I ended up here with "IMAGES BY DeMEGLIO". While I've made some posts in the past, I'm still unsure of what I'm doing.

Send me a comment or email me. I want to hear from you, What do you want to know? What will you find interesting about me? Do you want to know what I'm working on these days?

I look forward to hearing from you!

Anthony