Rick’s Rants and Raves

A couple of weeks ago, I shot Mother Grove at the Dublin Pub in Dayton. As luck would have it, they had another performance within easy driving distance, so Anne and I looked forward to another night experiencing ‘da Grove. In addition, the lead singer, Brad, asked me to shoot a portrait for the band. That didn’t work out so well, but I did shoot the rest of their performance.

First off, Brad, if you’re reading this, you may want to stop. In this post I’ll describe the inner workings of an artist-wannabe. It would be kinda like me seeing you guys working out the early details of a new song, or watching the sausage being made. I think you’ll like the end product. The struggles that got me there might diminish your confidence in my photography skills.

OK, still here? I guess you really want to know then…

I struggled for the first hour of their performance with a sort of sophomore slump. I had been so pleased with my first set of pics that I was having a difficult time framing shots that I thought were worthy of the praise I’d received. It didn’t help that I was sleep deprived (my own stupidity). It didn’t help that I didn’t get to shoot the portrait. A pint of beer did help, a bit.

After the portrait tests, the next 50 shots were of Laura. Laura’s sweet, and I like her performances. I had also figured out from the first shoot that lighting a woman at a microphone playing a violin (aka fiddle) was very difficult. Unfortunately that knowledge didn’t really help my framing, just my determination to work with my light stand (Anne) until I started to get the results I liked. Laura also warmed up to my camera a bit. She told me during a break that she had attempted to not bounce around quite so much when she noticed me near by.

I think my determination paid off in the end.

As I was doing the post-processing, Anne asked why I was doing so many pictures in black-and-white. The reason is the color balance–the bar’s stage lights were about six different colors, from dark orange to pale blue. My flash was gelled to match a tungsten light bulb (overhead floods on the stage), and the camera was set to tungsten white balance. So the light hitting the performers from my flash looked great, but the rest looked like crap. Most of the pictures of the bagpiper, John, had him with a ruddy face and lobster-red arms. Black-and-white to the rescue.

During one of the breaks, a gentleman introduced himself “Hi, you don’t know me” and then went on to ask about my flash modifier. I described the purpose behind the snoot I had made out of craft foam: keep light on the performer of interest, and not blast the rest of the patrons or performers. He assured me that it was working very well–although I was taking flash photography in a dark bar, it was not obtrusive at all. Excellent. This is exactly the kind of effect it is designed for: drummer lit, drums not.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I didn’t like how much ambient light I had picked up by using a slow shutter speed. This time I kept the shutter around 1/80 with a wide open aperture, and ISO400. This meant that any snooted shot had a black background. If I used the flash diffuser (not as much this time), I could still see a fair bit of background. I had to use the diffuser if I wanted to capture the interaction between the performers, but that tended to show me the ceiling tile and slightly purple valence around the stage. Maybe my next modifier will be a fan shaped snoot so that the flash is wide but not tall (or tall-but-not-wide in portrait mode). This would have been an awesome shot with a fan-snoot:

On Peaches’ stage, the bass player, Jim, was in the second row, which vexed me greatly. I so dearly loved a shot from Dublin Pub that I was disappointed to not have my favorite wide-angle target easily accessible. Toward the end of the night, I put the flash, with diffuser, on a main speaker left of the stage. It had just enough angle to throw some light back on Jim. Laura noticed, and graciously stayed out of its way while I shot. Again, a shot of Jim is my favorite of the night (done in sepia at Anne’s suggestion).

Its funny. I felt pretty crappy about the shoot at the end of the night. Maybe it was the sleep-deprivation. Maybe it was my desire to make even more “oh wow” photos than before. Maybe it was my disappointment at not being able to do the portrait. But now that I’ve gone through the set, I feel like I did a decent job. Next time I’ll be sure to get a better night’s sleep before hand.

Brad, if you’re still reading, I hope you like them. And I really hope we can work out a portrait session again sometime soon.

This past Friday was a big deal for me. Based on my prior work, Brad, the lead singer for Mother Grove, asked me to shoot a band portrait. I was very excited about, and flattered by the request. Again, I borrowed gear from my friend, Tony, and even bought some black background paper just in case there wasn’t a suitably cool background at the venue.

According to the Brad’s best estimates, I’d have an hour to shoot the band–after sound check and prior to performing. I was optimistic we’d get something interesting in that time. I had no clue what I was going to do, but I was sure creativity would ooze from the band, and all I would have to do would be to add some dramatic lighting and shoot 3 frames per seconds.

Anne and I arrived at the venue, said hello to the band, then ate dinner. We had plenty of time prior to the sound check, which was fortunate because service was slow. We paid the check, then went back to the band and Brad and I started talking about portrait ideas. We wandered around outside the venue a bit, but ultimately decided a Foosball table near the stage could be interesting. I set up some lights, and started popping test shots as the sound tech arrived, 20 minutes late.

The sound tech was methodical in his work. No problem, I thought. With the lights and framing set up, I’d need like 10 minutes with the band to make the shot. Then came the technical difficulties–one of the mics didn’t work, and one of the monitors was flaky. And did I mention that the sound tech was methodical? According to Brad, this guy really knew his stuff, and I don’t doubt that. I started thinking “emergency shot”–get the band together, even though they weren’t in their stage attire, and try the shot. Unfortunately the bass player was engaged in helping the sound tech resolve the technical problems. And I reminded myself why they were here: to perform. I wanted to take pictures, but that was secondary to their purpose that evening. They finished their sound check at 10PM. They started performing at 10PM. All I had for the portrait was the test shot. I shot their performance the rest of the night, and will post those pictures later.

Rather than leave Tony’s gear unused, I set up my little studio in the basement with the intent of shooting a self portrait. When Anne saw what I was doing, she asked if I would take some pictures of her so that she could update her profile pics. When Emily saw the pictures of Anne, she wanted me to shoot her as well. Then, of course, Nathan followed suit.

Everyone had fun.

This evening, Emily was recognized at the Board of Education meeting for having been a member of the winning team in a district wide Math Scramble. Her team was the top team in the whole district. Oh, and the kids were all part of the Gifted and Talented Program. So her team beat the top of the top. And to hear her tell it afterward, “Yeah, it was kinda lame. I did all the work.”

Because of a well timed phone call, my dad learned about the recognition in time for him to make it to the meeting. It was very touching to see him get a bit choked up (like he did at my wedding) when he congratulated Emily afterward. As a special celebration, we let Emily choose a restaurant for dinner. She chose Edamame Sushi & Grill.

The kids love this place. It has a bright green, very modern, decor. I imagine sitting in a cafe in the hippest part of  Tokyo. I know have no such knowledge to compare it to, but its a fun place to eat nonetheless.

Emily wanted sushi. Nathan wanted Chicken Pineapple Hibachi. Anne wanted sushi. I wanted Scallops Hibachi. My dad had never eaten sushi before.

This surprised me. He’s traveled a fair bit, thanks to his role on the board of directors of a travel agency. And he’s never been afraid to try any food put in front of him, including, most famously, dog biscuits. But he’s never tried sushi. So we recommended a selection.

He enjoyed everything he tried.

I tried to limit my picture taking just a little bit so as to not thoroughly annoy my family. But I couldn’t help pulling out the zoom macro lens. This is Anne’s favorite roll: the Fire Crunch.

One last shot as we were heading out. The lights hanging from the ceiling reminded me of cats’ eyes. This shot is intentionally under-exposed.

It was a great time. The kids had a chance to hang out with Grandpa, eating awesome food that I’m still astonished they eat.

We have crazy weekends. We have weekends where I go back to work so I can get some rest. This was one of those weekends.

Friday afternoon, Anne dropped this kids off with a grandma. We had a little bit of time to kill, then went to dinner with Erika, Erin and Tim. After dinner, we joined Theo and his band Mescalito at the Thirsty Ear. Of course I took my camera gear and shot a number of pictures. We got home around 2AM.

Saturday morning I had work to do from 8AM to 11AM, then we had some lunch and went to the OSU v. Iowa game.

By the way, they won! Thanks for the tickets mom!

We finally picked up our kids after the game, had some dinner, then went home and crashed. We got home around 10PM.

Sunday morning we met families from Anne’s Girl Scout Troup and my Cub Scout pack at 8:30AM to begin the drive to the Newport Aquarium for Scout day. Between the two groups, we purchased 55 tickets.

More of my pictures are here. I got home from Newport around 4PM and took a nap. Anne arrived a bit later.

We finished off the weekend with a bit more work for me, and some cross-stitching for Anne.

I just might have to take a nap at my desk tomorrow…