Last week I was sent by the Washington City Paper to cover the opening night of the brand-new U Street Music Hall. However, the owners of the club are not allowing any photography during their events, which made my task a bit more challenging. Instead of shooting the actual opening night, I showed up before doors to do a quick portrait of the owners, local DJs Will Eastman and Jesse Tittsworth. I had an idea of using a gridded light on them in the middle of the dance floor, with a logo or light show in the background.

When I got there it was clear that this was going to work nicely: there was indeed a lit logo I could use as a background; even better, there was a large stepladder sitting in the middle of the floor that I could use to get a nice high angle on the two DJs and the shadows that they would cast from my light. I didn’t actually grid it, just zoomed it a bit; and after a bit of deliberation I also added two SB-600s to the exposure. Even before it opened, U Street Music Hall was becoming known for an incredible sound system, and I highlighted this a bit by using my SB-600s to paint a little light on the two speakers at the base of the stage. In the above shot they’re not fully visible, but a horizontal version of the photo ran in the City Paper, and without that additional light the sides of the photos would have gone totally dark and boring.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 25th, 2010 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Lighting & Studio, Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.