As mentioned in my previous post, it was snowing hard (historically so) and the temperatures were rather cold last Saturday, so naturally it was a perfect day for a promo shoot outside. I spent a great day shooting with Margot MacDonald, a fast-rising young musician from the DC area. I’d planned on doing a portrait with her and her band at her Friday 9:30 Club show, but that got postponed thanks to the snow, and so we decided to do an impromptu portrait session on Saturday instead. The nice thing about living in a city is that I just walked to our chosen location (in and around Dupont Circle), and Margot hopped in the metro, and getting around was no problem. Definitely not the case for my friends further out in the suburbs, who are helpless until their streets are plowed and by now are going through some serious cabin fever.

Margot brought a number of outfits and was a fantastic subject; what amazes me most is that she somehow doesn’t look cold in any of the photos, even crouching in knee-deep snow wearing a dress. She also just looks like she’s having fun in so many of the shots, which I think is in keeping with her personality and image. Because most of our shoots were in broad daylight, my favorite stuff, such as the headline photo above, tended to be shot with natural light. Snowstorms basically turn the entire world into a giant source of diffuse light - the cloudy sky becomes a huge overhead softbox, and all that already nondirectional light reflects off of the snow and fills in shadows everywhere. It’s about as flattering as natural light can get.

That said, I did gang a couple speedlights together - after putting them in Ziploc bags to protect them from the rapidly falling snow - to overcome the sun in a few shots. For instance, the above shot was in full daylight, but I was able to underexpose the background through a combination of high-speed sync (1/500th) and two SB-600s fired at full power with no modifiers. I put one SB-600 on a light stand as normal, and used a Justin clamp to stick the other one in roughly the same position to avoid divergent shadows as much as possible. In retrospect, I could and should have put them even closer together, as the shadows do look a little wonky. Plus, the light is obviously really hard - this would have been an ideal time to have a more powerful studio strobe with enough excess power that I could have put a softbox or at least a beauty dish on it. But then again, there’s no way I would have been lugging around a battery pack for such a strobe on a day like this.

The speedlights in all these shots were triggered with RadioPoppers, as I don’t trust Nikon’s CLS system to work 100% in broad daylight. Incidentally, I’ve been frustrated by the fiddly mounting system of the RadioPopper PX receivers, so instead of using them yesterday, I just used gaffer tape to stick them to the flashes. That was much more effective than those plastic mounts, and I didn’t have to worry about them falling off at all. I also covered the battery compartment of the RadioPopper transmitter with gaffer tape to seal it from moisture - not sure if that was necessary but it definitely made me feel better.

Later, as the sunlight faded, I was able to get a little more creative with the lighting and save my batteries a bit, as in the above shot. This one was done with an SB-800 and an SB-600 ganged through a shoot-thru umbrella, both at 1/8 power and with full CTO gels, along with an SB-600 with 1/4″ grid spot lighting the background (also at 1/8 power I believe). This shot is obviously a bit too “artsy” to be used as a promo pic, but it’s one of my favorites from the day.

There were some unique challenges with this shoot. Because it was so cold and Margot’s outfits were not exactly warm, we retreated to Starbucks or Soho Tea & Coffee after each shoot to warm up. In other words: condensation city. About halfway through the day my D700 focusing screen fogged up, on some internal surface I couldn’t clean. I actually did one of our shoots - the one from which the below photo comes - shooting almost blind; luckily the condensation didn’t affect the image or the autofocus functionality, but it certainly meant that I couldn’t give Margot any feedback as she was posing - because I couldn’t see her!

Here’s a set of some of my favorites from the day. Check out Margot’s music at Myspace.

You may have heard that it snowed a lot on the Eastern seaboard the past couple days. The Washington Post is saying that DC got 25 inches or so, which sounds about right to me - when I stepped outside on Saturday morning, the snow came up to my knees, and there were still several hours of snowfall still to come at that point. On Friday night, I wandered around a bit with a few friends, shooting some typical documentary snow photos using only a Nikon 35/1.8 DX lens. I’ve heard that this lens works well on FX bodies with just a bit of vignetting. All the photos in this set shot with that lens (which is all but the last two) are totally uncropped so you can see how true or untrue that is.

I like how this lens works on my full-frame D700. Yes, there are limitations: it has to be shot wide open or the vignetting gets much worse, and the further away the focal point, the more pronounced the vignetting is as well. That said, when shot wide open with a close focus, the vignetting actually almost disappears. This isn’t evident in any of the photos in this set because I didn’t get really close to any subjects, unfortunately. Still, in a lot of cases the dark corners actually give kind of a cool, claustrophobic effect. (Not to mention that, in some applications like concert photography, they are often not even noticeable at all.)

Again, here’s a larger set of photos with this lens, from Friday night.

Two years ago, one of the most challenging things I shot as part of my photo-a-day project was a dance performance by local hip-hop company DCypher. The lighting was dim, the action was fast, and I was using a manual focus Series E 50/1.8 lens, which did not meter on my D70. I was quite happy with what I got. In retrospect, most of what I got was junk. This time around, shooting the same group almost exactly two years later, my camera had an extra zero on the end and I had an array of fast autofocus lenses at my disposal. My results, needless to say, were much better.

I favored my 24-70/2.8 for the most part, with some usage of the 80-200/2.8 for some tighter shots; I actually think I should have used the latter a bit more. Breaking out the 50/1.4 might not have been a bad idea either, but I never did. Because I needed shutter speeds of at least 1/200, preferably much faster, to stop the very fast motion going on onstage, I was mostly locked in at ISO 6400, dropping down to 3200 in the rare moments that the lighting brightened up enough. (Considering ISO 6400 is two full stops more sensitive than my D70 was capable of, it’s not surprising my photos were better this time.)

Not much else to say about this; the challenge was purely about nailing the exposure and getting the timing right. Compositionally I didn’t have too many options; I was seated directly in front of the stage and could not move around during the performance. The nice thing about this position - aside from the obvious perk of being close to the action - was that by shooting slightly up at the performers, any jumps or other airborne moves they made were exaggerated by the angle.

Full set here (170 photos), or if that’s completely overwhelming, here’s a smaller set of highlights (34 photos).

OK, that’s better. I had the chance to do a quick portrait with Nikki, Jessi and Kelley of Those Darlins before their packed-house show at the Black Cat last night. Unlike my shoot with Epica, we didn’t have to do this one outside in the miserable cold, which made things a gazillion times easier.

All three of these women were incredibly easy to work with; we looked around the club for a while trying to figure where to shoot, and discovered that the Black Cat has two, uh, black cats in its backstage area: one a huge papier-mache tiger (or something like that, I need to bone up on my big cat ID skills) hanging from the ceiling, and one a smaller statue. Unfortunately, they wouldn’t let us take down the big tiger, so we settled for the statue. This is a simple shot with essentially two key lights and a background light.

At camera left is an umbrella’d SB-800 with a quarter CTO gel at 1/16 power; camera right is an SB-600 at 1/16 power, shot through a lampshade. I seem to have misplaced my other umbrella, so some improvisation was necessary. It worked to soften the light a bit, but not quite as much as I would have liked. The background light is an SB-600 at far camera right, clamped to a chair and shot through a radiator (actually a portable space heater) at 1/8 power. Again, some improvisation just to throw a bit of a pattern on the background and make it a little more interesting than just a plain blue wall. That’s it. I shot off about 30 frames of this one look, and then we were done. And then they proceeded to blow up the backstage with their seriously high-energy, punky version of country music (I took photos of that, too).

Thanks to Nikki, Jessi, Kelley and Kellyn at 2:30 Publicity for working with me on this one.

Photo.net (aka the website I used to learn all about photography over a decade ago) just posted a very comprehensive guide to “Club Photography: Photographing Bands, Musicians, Performers in Low Light.” It’s pretty good; what I like about it is that, after discussing equipment and logistical questions, author Jeff Spirer focuses on compositional challenges before discussing technical ones, which is the opposite approach from most concert photography articles.

The article is mostly geared towards shooting in small venues, with few words dedicated to discussing the finer points of getting a photo pass, and nothing about the dynamics of shooting in a photo pit or under the three-song limit. As such it’s great advice for folks just starting out who generally won’t be granted photo access to bigger shows just yet. The only advice I disagree with is using aperture-priority mode rather than full manual. That’s never worked for me; I’ve found that concerts are one place where I’m almost always smarter than my camera is in terms of exposure.

Let’s just say this is not how I envisioned sharing photo space with James Nachtwey. Currently at the TIME.com photo essays home page, the top essay is a series of Nachtwey photos documenting the devastation in Haiti. Directly underneath that is… a photo essay about Lady Gaga. The first two photos in this essay are mine. While I’d rather be doing what Nachtwey is doing instead of taking pictures of crazy Lady Gaga fans, I’m still pretty psyched that Time bought a couple of my pictures.

Above, another fan photo from that show (not one that Time used). Fun thing to take note of: both my shots in the TIME.com photo essay were taken at ISO 6400. D700 for the win.

(Left to right: guest keyboardist Oliver Palotai, guitarist Isaac Delahaye, guitarist/vocalist Mark Jansen, bassist Yves Huts, drummer Ariën van Weesenbeek, vocalist Simone Simons.)

On Tuesday, Dutch symphonic metal band Epica kicked off their U.S. tour at Jaxx. They were nice enough to do a quick portrait shoot with me despite the hectic schedule of the first day of the tour. Unfortunately, Jaxx has no backstage and literally no place inside where we could do a shoot, and so we had to do it outside, where it was really way too cold for this kind of nonsense.

I had scouted the venue a bit and only found one really interesting spot for a shoot: an awesomely beat-up back door covered in band stickers and such. Unfortunately, when the time came to do this portrait, one of the opening bands was in the middle of loading out through that door. So, lacking other options, I set up my lights in the middle of the parking lot: boring, but at least not a totally obvious cliche, like if I’d used the brick wall of the club.

When the time came to do the shoot it was so cold that I felt bad and just grabbed a couple frames and then let the band go do their thing. With limited time, six band members and no interesting environment to work with, inspiration was running low. All I managed was the above; the only interesting thing here is that Simone Simons, the lead singer of the group, is highlighted a bit with warmer light than the rest of the band.  It works well, I think: the color of her jacket and hair really stand out compared to the other five, who are rendered almost monochrome.

Key lighting was an SB-600 through an umbrella, camera left, at 1/16th power. The rim light is coming from camera left behind the band, a bare SB-600 also at 1/16th. This light serves not only to provide some definition to the band members, especially those on the left, but also gives that splash of light on the ground to give some context to the shot. Finally, I set up an SB-800, gelled with a full and quarter CTO, at camera right, with a 1/4″ grid, aimed at Simons on the end and fired at 1/32nd power. This is what gives her that splash of color that’s lacking from the rest of the shot.

There are all kinds of things I would have liked to have done better with this shot, but the simplest would have been an additional rim light on the right side. Also, a bit of wide-angle distortion is evident here as Simons is rendered a bit, er, wider than she is in real life. Taking a step back would have mitigated that issue.

I’ve hopefully got a few more on-location portrait shoots lined up with musicians coming to town soon. I think I’ll do better with them: the combination of the cold and a lack of a good background to work with really hamstrung me on this one.

Many thanks to the band for being willing to do this, and to their tour manager Vikki for coordinating. Also to one of Jaxx’s managers, Marie, who held my key light to keep it from blowing over in the wind. That’s an important job!

Some time ago I sent my D300 in because of the autofocus flakiness I’ve described in previous posts. I sent it in on Thursday, January 7th, got an estimate for the repair work on Thursday, January 14th, and got the camera back on Wednesday, January 20th. So just under two weeks’ turnaround, including shipping times. Not bad at all.

The repair was classified B2 - “moderate repair, major parts replaced.” This is what was done, according to the paperwork I received:

RPL BAYONET MOUNT
ADJ AUTO FOCUS OPERATION
CLN CCD
GENERAL CHECK & CLEAN
ADJ FLASH OPERATION
REPLACE RUBBER GRIP

Total came to just under $250. For that sum I have a D300 with theoretically fixed autofocus circuitry (nice), a brand-new lens mount (great), and a replacement for my well-worn rubber grip (cool, but I don’t care about cosmetics so whatever). Also, the camera came back safely and spiffily packaged, per the above. I haven’t actually had a chance to test it yet. But assuming all works well, this was a pretty good repair experience.

I hit up another meet & greet last weekend, spent most of my time hanging out and chatting with folks, but also managed to get a few shoots in. I need all the practice I can get to develop and hone a lighting style that I’m comfortable with and that’s creative and interesting. I’ve spent my last couple shoots honing a warm/cool kind of color contrast, using CTO and blue gels (or CTO gels and tungsten white balance) to offset a warmly lit model against a cool blue background. I really like this look but it may be time to move on and try some new colors.

The above shot is lit with two gelled strobes, no umbrellas or other diffusion - it’s all hard light. The key light is an SB-800 clamped to the railing below and to the right of the subject, gelled with a full CTO and a 1/4 CTO. Above and to the left is an SB-600 clamped to the left-side railing, gelled blue and aimed down so that some blue light is skipping off the stairs and a lot is washing onto the wall. This isn’t my favorite shot of the series but I like how much the CTO-gelled key really brought out the model’s reddish hair color.

The above was my favorite shot from the event. Two lights again, one high camera left with a CTO and a 1/4″ grid to create that dramatic fall-off, and one underneath the desk, gelled blue obviously. I like how the angles turned out in this composition (there’s hardly a right angle to be found, it’s all skewed in a neat way), as well as the spotlight effect of the gridded key light. Fun stuff.

October

Let’s start with the concerts this time around. The last quarter of the year was actually a bit slow for me in terms of shooting music, but October saw me shoot a stellar (for photography, but musically as well) Ra Ra Riot show at the 9:30 Club. The top shot above isn’t sharp, but I love it anyway because of the cellist’s facial expression and the implied motion. Below that one is a shot of The Faceless opening for In Flames, also at the 9:30; typically for a metal band, the lighting for this set was almost entirely backlight, but at least it was colorful backlight, which allowed for some neat shots like this one. Also the mic-eating action is second to none here, ha.

A pretty major event for me this month was an enormous meet & greet at Sly Horse Studios, in which I got a lot of practice with my off-camera lighting techniques in shooting portraits. My favorite is this one of Amira and Edwin - a bunch of the shots I took of them look like they could be band promo photos, this one included.

On a different tack, I also went on my first backpacking trip of the year, but it ended up just being a day hike because the weather was so miserable that my friends’ dog wasn’t quite up for it. But snow-covered landscapes make for easy, beautiful photos, and I’m really happy with a bunch of what I got that day. I like the above shot because of the sense of scale it provides, tiny (but colorful) hikers lost amidst a forest of white and green.

Finally, I got a couple new toys, namely a pair of X-ray lenses with apertures of f/0.75 and f/1.0. These lenses have a bizarre and wonderful way of rendering reality when they’re slapped onto a DSLR (definitely not what they were originally meant for). The above shot isn’t Photoshopped at all other than increased contrast; the color rendition and smoothness is all part of the charm of these lenses.

The rest of the year after the jump!

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