RAСEƆAЯ Promo, originally uploaded by rick020200.

Last week I had the chance to do some promo work for RAСEƆAЯ. I had been introduced to them by Scott and shot their reunion performance. Because of their unique stage presence, I knew I wanted to do a promo shoot with them.

But the question that killed me was “what kind of promo shoot?” I’ve recently been looking at every picture posted to the Band Promos pool and had decided that I didn’t want a bunch of guys standing and facing the camera with stoic faces and a nondescript background (like this one, or this one, or this one, or this one [yes, that's mine]).

My favorite pictures were the ones with a , or some bit of action, or even just a bit of over-the-top expression. I had a lull in my schedule so I reached out to Andy, the lead singer, to see what we could arrange.
At about that time, I noticed a house on my drive home that seemed to be getting torn down by hand, one board at a time. This house sits on the same property as another house, and had obviously been vacant for years, so I figured they were finally tearing it out. I’d seen other pics in dilapidated buildings and thought it could make for an interesting setting. I found the owners on the county auditor’s web site, looked up their phone number and left a message. The next day, I stopped by the house and knocked on the door (boy was I ever nervous) and met Judy. I introduced myself and explained what I wanted to do. She explained that her husband was remodeling the house, but that he was out of town and that I should check back the next week. I left her my card. When I checked back, I talked with their teenage son and left another message. I figured anything more than three attempts would be harassment, so I just let it go.
Fortunately, Andy had an excellent plan B. We could do a shoot focusing on his dad’s restored 1955 car (I’m an idiot for not knowing what kind it was). We agreed on a date, and I quickly finished work on my DIY strip lights (hopefully I’ll do a post on those soon) since I wanted to use them in lighting the scene above.
I bought a 12-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon, threw it in a cooler and brought it with me, figuring the cans would make great props, and give their hands something to do. Oh, and it was terribly hot and the cold beer made everyone happier.
My first idea was to shoot them doing something stoopid to the car under the hood. The strip lights were necessary here to focus the light on the under-hood area, make it reasonably large (soft shadows) and come from a lot of angles (few shadows). I also had a flash on a stand at the back of the car to add depth to the garage, rather than making it a black hole.
The next idea came up on the fly, and started with someone’s comment “maybe we could do something with the trunk”. So I had the idea to work with a mock abduction scene. I wanted to have the band members stuffing the lead singer into the trunk for a couple of frames, then have him battle back and put them in their place (ha!).

Finally, they wanted a shot of all of them in the car. I was really sweating it now. Light was fading, and I knew anything non-flashed would have them dark in the car, and bright sky behind them. So I placed a flash in the center floor of the front seat with a bounce card, and a second flash in the back seat pointed at the white backs of the front seats.
But that wasn’t enough because of the way the driver was leaning toward the window. So I snooted a third flash, turned it way down in power and had a voice activated light stand point it at the driver from just over my shoulder.

When I got home I played around with the post processing on this final shot a great deal because a) there was a suburban looking garage and basketball pole in the background, and b) the back-seat passengers are a bit too fuzzy. I realize now I need to have the aperture set to f/8 or more to get better depth of field. In the end, I just chopped out the back ground, put in one of my sunsets and called it done.

It was a good time, and an excellent learning opportunity. They guys were a blast to work with and were very flexible. I hope they’re able to make use of the photos in their promotional materials.

Moxie, 100mm, ISO 200, 1/40s, f/2.8.

I’ve had a bit of gear lust recently. For the last couple of months I’ve been coveting a Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 lens. I’ve just recently bought a new camera, and had decided that I should wait before getting a lens. Unfortunately for our savings account, Midwest Photo recently had a “tent sale” for a lot of used and closeout merchandise. After we perused the bins for a bit, I decided to show this lens to Anne.

“We have a used one” the man behind the counter (MBTC) said helpfully. Oh dear. The used one was discounted 30% off retail and was in very good condition. Oh dear. But the tripod mount was a bit damaged. Phew. I pointed out the damage, and the MBTC explained that he had ordered a replacement part for it, and he should have it around somewhere…. Oh dear. A few minutes later the damaged part was gone, and the lens was a good as new. Oh dear. Anne and I stepped aside to talk about the status of our savings account, and the fact that we have a little bit of slack. And it was, after all, a pretty steep discount.
Oh yes!

They had originally found and been drawn to this picture, but when I told them that the adult in the photo was the child’s dad, and not a Free Geek volunteer, they were a little disappointed. I sent them thumbnails of the whole set from our Freek Geek trips and they preferred the image above because Scott was in it, helping the boys. Woo hoo!

On my second attempt, I was able to capture a much more dramatic sky, and I was more aware to capture some foreground interest. I think I need to edit this one just a little bit to make the sailboat more visible. But for now, I love how the sky looks like it is on fire.

Rainy days at Chautauqua are a lot of fun for me photographically. The lighting is much softer, and people are no longer walking around squinting. As a thunderstorm was in full downpour, I grabbed an umbrella and the camera and went to shoot the crowd at the arts festival that was on-going. I imagined that I’d see people hunched under umbrellas while shopping in tents. I thought it might be a fun shot. I like this one. When I was crouching to get the shot, umbrella close at hand, in the rain-shade of a tree, a woman said to her companions “There’s someone dedicated to getting a shot”. Yup. Sometimes. I dearly love the shot above as a prototypical Chautauqua moment. No where else in my daily life will I see someone riding a bike with a golf umbrella in the rain.

• First of all, they completely abused the dutch tilt. The whole idea with tilting the frame is to throw it a little off-balance, to convey motion, or unease. If it were used to show a flower girl running around guests at the reception, that would be perfect. Bride and groom at the altar? Uh, not so much. That’s what I mean by abused–fully 70% of their delivered photos made use of this technique. And of those, nearly all of them were badly done. Personally, I would recrop most of them if possible.  Here’s an example (not from the wedding) of a poorly done dutch tilt–there was no reason to tilt the frame.
• I mentioned that they were using external on-camera flash that seemed to be bouncing off of nowhere. Looking at the results, I can see some bounced light in the bride’s preparation (small room with white ceilings, ideal use of the technique). But in the formals in the sanctuary, there is nothing but incandescent ambient lighting hitting the subjects.
• Some of the formal portraits would have benefited from off-camera flash.  To their benefit, the formals were shot in the chancel of the church with pretty powerful overhead floods that provided pretty decent lighting for most of the shots. However, if subjects were just a little too far back and the light was feathering off, they were a bit too shadowy for my tastes. The unfortunate perfect example is the formal picture of the bride and groom–3200 ISO, 1/80 and f/6.3 and were pretty dark under the eyes, no catch lights and very soft focus. Oh and heavy vignetting.
• Almost all of the formals have been vignetted pretty heavily in Photoshop. Many of the rest have a little vignette but it isn’t as heavy handed as the portraits. I don’t care for the vignette personally, but at least it was used appropriately.
• They benefited greatly by having two shooters throughout the event. They really did an excellent job of capturing the breadth of the wedding party and guests. They did a very nice job of capturing details and special moments that I think would have been more challenging with a lone photographer.
• My only other complaint is that it took them a month to post-process the files (difference between file modified date and exif picture taken date). I understand that they had a card fail during post, and I think that delayed their processing as they tried to recover the lost data. But still, a month seems like a long time.

Finally, I’ll share a few of the pictures that they took of me and my family. There’s no exif copyright data so that I can protect them from my scathing not-even-a-pro-photog-never-shot-a-wedding-one-man’s opinion. In the pictures they took of us, you can see a couple of my complaints.

I’m not a competitive person, and I didn’t want to be the third photog distracting the crowd. So I walked away and deleted the few shots I’d already taken. Not. Worth. It.

But that didn’t stop me from shooting a number of other bands. And other details. And experimenting.

I introduced myself to Rob, another photographer I’d seen at events like this in the past. We chatted a bit, exchanged cards, then went our separate ways. He’s shooting “for himself” just like me, with a bit of side income to help fund the gear.

After I’d finished all my post processing and uploading, I went to send Rob an e-mail, and thought I’d see if he had posted pictures from Comfest. He has. And his photography is amazing. In fact, if you haven’t gone to look at my Flickr set, don’t bother. You’ll get a much better taste of Comfest, and of the performers, from his set. His pictures don’t need narratives–they speak for themselves.

Tonight I had my ego rightfully smacked down a bit. I have a long way to go. Don’t worry about me though. My ego always seems to return to its slightly-larger-than-nomal size.

Sunday was just as hot, and again I showed up a bit earlier than I needed to. I already knew where everything was, but I figured I would take a bit of time to shoot a few more groups so that I could send them free samples. I took a few picks of the Patrick McLaughlin Band, then meandered to the stage where I needed to be. Jazz Ethics was playing but before I could pull out my camera I was struck by the fact that there were three camcorders on tripods in the otherwise sparse audience up front (the rest of the crowd was cowering in the shade). Then I noticed that one of the women controlling a camcorder happened to have the same 70-300mm lens that I have, also on a Nikon. Then I remembered that Jazz Ethics was the band that I had exchanged two messages with but never heard from again. Oh well, I thought, they clearly already have someone capable of taking decent pictures.

As I walked around the performance area something bugged me about that 300mm lens and its keeper. I think her only “sin” was that she was taking pictures (for the 10 seconds that I watched) from her seat rather than moving around to create a composition. The assumption that leaped to my mind was that she had the gear but didn’t really know how to compose a shot. I think my ego got the better of me in that moment. Whatever it was, I decided to pull out my camera, drop my bag, and make a sweep of the band members.

After I finished, I touched base with the leader of my next band, Sanhedrin Move. Again, I talked about style and what to expect. He actually had a request–shoot each member tightly cropped on their faces, “so you can’t see their guts”. We both chuckled. As his band members are showing up, he tells me he wants to take me up on the offer to shoot a group portrait at the event. No problem, I tell him. I need just about 10 minutes once we decide on a location. With the sunlight beating down, and just one hot-shoe flash in my bag and no light stands (the rest of my gear was in my car 10 minutes away since I didn’t know he wanted a portrait) I started looking for shade to shoot them in. Of course all the shade near by was taken up by spectators, so we headed down toward a path (wheelchair accessible!) near the creek (hence ‘Creekside’). We found a bit of an alcove of trees with dappled sunlight coming through. I hoped to get the sun hitting them on the backs of their heads, and then I would add flash (oh the horror, on camera) to help fill in their faces.

You’ll notice that I didn’t actually post this on Flickr. As a group shot goes, it’s technically OK. Its just not terribly imaginative. Its way better than what they’ve got on their website (nothing) but it is clear to me this is definitely something I need to work on. Of course I had only 10 minutes to work with (by the time everyone was assembled and ambled down to the creek side) but I’d like to do better even in 10 minutes.

We got back to the stage just as Jazz Ethics finished. While Sanhedrin Move set up, I decided to make some idle chit-chat with the women who had the 70-300mm lens. “I see you have the same lens I do.” (I know, pick-up artist I’m not). “Oh? My husband put that on. I don’t really know anything about this thing.” We continued to chat a little bit and she asked if I was shooting for fun or professionally. I told her that a number of bands were paying me to shoot their perf0rmance. “So you were here to shoot these guys?” she asked, pointing to Jazz Ethics as they cleared their gear. After another moment of confused cross-wires discussion, she said “you should go talk to my husband”.

When I talked to her husband, the leader for Jazz Ethics, it became clear that he was the one I’d exchanged messages with and he had sent one last message to which I’d never replied. He was intending to hire me but had a few minor questions. Given the uncertainty of the situation, he told me he had brought money to pay me just in case. I declined the money since I hadn’t really given it my full effort, gave him my card, and promised I’d shoot him again, at the same festival rate, some other time. Since then, I’ve confirmed that MySpace didn’t tell me about a waiting message from him, but I take that as my failure to not check back.

Sanhedrin Move took the same stage as Vernon Hairston Trio and Capital Sound. I liked the familiarity of the environment. I liked knowing where to stand, where the wires were, and being recognized by the sound guys.

As requested, I kept most of the shots tightly cropped. Fortunately, that’s how I like to shoot.

After I made a couple of rounds of the band, I decided to experiment a bit. “Expand yourself” I thought. I decided to add a bit of fill light to the performers using on-camera external flash. I changed two aspects from how I’d been shooting: I changed from spot metering to matrix, and from EV+0.3 to EV0. Using ambient only, spot metering is a must, and I have to be sure the spot is directly on the face of the performer. But adding flash meant that I wanted the camera to expose for the whole scene, and I would add flash to only the nearby subjects.  I also like EV just a little higher than even because I like well lit faces. But now I wanted the background to be a little richer and darker.

When compared with a similar shot with no fill its hard for me to tell the difference. Actually, I think I light in the “no fill” shot better. But it was worth a shot.

Toward the end of the set, after I was done and just hanging out to the side, the drummer catches my attention, and motions in a non-descript way. So I head up to him to find out what shot he wants me to get. “Get me with the sunglasses  on!” Righto!

They finished their set, I said goodbye, and took off.

What went right:

• 5 positive responses out of 22 cold e-mails tells me my price and approach worked pretty well.
• having my own water bottle, and identifying a free drinking fountain early saved me from either heat exhaustion or drinking away my profits.
• All 4 paid bands have seen their samples and have been very pleased, most pledging to work with me again in the future.
• sunscreen both days made sure I didn’t get burnt
• no beer made sure I didn’t drink away the profits
• I handed out business cards to nearly all the band members for each paid shoot

What went wrong:

• miscommunication with one band led to a delayed opportunity. I should be able to shoot them this fall, fortunately.
• My “free sample” shots aren’t nearly as good as my paid shots. For a couple of the “free sample” bands, I’m not even sure I’m going to send them an e-mail with links to their shots. They’re still better than Point&Shoot fan photos, but I can (and should) do better on speculative marketing
• I ran out of business cards and had only a few left for Sanhedrin Move.

Balance sheet so far: $175 received – $24 on food/entrance/parking = $126. Plus one more gig scheduled, and a good relationship with five local bands, and probably another $25 from the straggler. I definitely couldn’t live off this kind of money, but most of these musician aren’t living off their music either. They do it as a self-supporting hobby. As one put it: “Since we all ‘moon-light’ in this industry we are happy to support someone like us who is out for fun (and a little money on the side is nice!)”

Six weeks later (two weeks from the festival) I sent another e-mail to those I hadn’t heard from, and in response I got one more yes. So, going into the weekend, I had four performances lines up as paid shoots. Though I had higher hopes for the success rate, as cold marketing goes, a 20% return is pretty darn good, I think.

I made sure that they understood that I was expecting half of the money up front, before I started shooting the performance, and that the other half would be due after they’d seen a sample slide show. I was really concerned I would get a response like “Yeah, sure, go ahead and shoot our band” from someone who really didn’t intend to pay. Fortunately, that didn’t seem to happen.

I had three bands to shoot on Saturday, and one on Sunday. I arrived pretty early so that I could get the layout of the festival and look for photographic opportunities. The sun was beating down causing most of the festival goers to huddle in the shadows on the edges of the performance spaces. This also meant that group portraits in this light would look horrible.

While waiting for my first gig, I decided to shoot a few of the other bands as a bit of marketing. I figured I’d make a few pics and send them to the band as free samples. So I grabbed a couple of Trombones Plus and Terra City Blues.

First up was Vernon Hairston Trio. I showed up in the performance area well ahead of their performance time, and was able to pick them out as they brought their gear to the stage preparation area. I introduced myself, chatted about what kinds of photos he would like (no strong preferences) and he handed me a check. Woot! So far so good!

I shot their performance all ambient. Fortunately, they had a translucent temporary stage roof/tarp over their heads. So the light on them was nice and even, and there were trees around 1/2 of the back of the stage, producing some really nice bokeh in the shots.

As soon as they were finished, I ran back to my car to pick up some portrait gear–extra flashes, light stands, tripod, etc–because Long Tall Deb and the Drifter Kings had asked to meet an hour before their performance to do the portrait shot. So I lugged all that stuff over to their stage (did I mention it was hot?) where I found Deb in the prep tent. Unfortunately one of her band members was going to be late, so they wouldn’t be able to do the portrait session today. But she did have cash ready!

After killing an hour, I came back to shoot Deb. She really likes to play up the “tall” part by adding some killer heels.

The stage for this performance was west facing with a black background. For me, this was perfect because I could expose for the performers (nuked by the hot late afternoon sun), and the background would disappear.

Deb and her guitar player clearly had a special relationship on stage. They were frequently jamming together, making “music moments” like this easy to capture.

There was a trio sitting behind my seat (where I plopped my camera bag) that would periodically get up to dance. They were great dancers who really knew what they were doing, and were really enjoying the LTD performance as well. I immediately noticed they were all wearing ear plugs like I was, which to me, said they were serious festival goers–sitting up front to experience the full force of the music. I handed them one of my business cards and encouraged them to send me an e-mail so that I could send them some pics. After we left the LTD performance, I noticed the wording on one of their shirts: SwingColumbus.com. No wonder they looked like the knew what they were doing. Today, I got a message and happily sent them a bunch of pics.

After my editing, I still had 130+ good photos from the 75 minute LTD performance. They were a real treat to shoot.

I had a long break until Capital Sound performed so I went to shoot a bit of the Sonny Moorman Group performance. The crowd had grown significantly since the beginning of the LTD performance making it a bit challenging to get to the front of the stage. But I had learned during LTD that even though most of the seats were taken, and a lot of people had filled in with their own chairs, the front rows were largely empty. So I made my way to the front like I knew what I was doing, plopped down my camera bag and started shooting. Experience and a bit of “I’m supposed to be here” behavior meant that I could walk into the “MUSICIANS ONLY” area with impunity so that I could get shots from the side of the stage.

I wandered around to watch a couple of other bands briefly, but didn’t shoot because they weren’t visually appealing to me. They were musicians, not performers, sitting on stage playing their instruments, with stoic faces of concentration +3. Bleh. Those don’t make good photographs.

I meandered back to the stage where Capital Sound was to perform. I’d been interacting via e-mail with Tyler, their drummer and organizer ever since my first e-mail solicitation. He had declined the portrait offer at the festival because he knew it wouldn’t be that great photographically (he’s right, of course). But he did want to pay me for a portrait session. We’ve been trying to work out a time for all 10 of us to get together, but that has been a bit of a challenge. Tyler and the rest of the band were gathering, and Tyler handed me a check for the full amount. He figured that would just be easier for him, and it seemed he trusted me to make good on the deal.

As Capital Sound was preparing to take the stage, I set up light stands and flashes near the risers for the temporary roof structure on either side of the front of the stage. The stage lighting was pretty good for the front row of performers, but sucked for everyone in back. So I knew ambient was not going to cut it for this performance, especially considering daylight was fading fast at 9:30PM.

“Fat Mike” paraded on stage with a young woman on each arm (his wife captured the moment with video on her point&shoot) at the beginning of their set as part of their stage shtick. Since these guys were intending to spend more with me, and had trusted me with their full payment, I really wanted to make good on the shoot. But capturing four horn players, either individually or together, is very challenging.

I camped out in the position to grab this shot for minutes at a time, waiting for a) them all to be playing, and b) all their faces to be visible, and c) for my finger to press the shutter fast enough to capture it.

I also really enjoy the challenge of capturing drummers. My ability (and determination) to capture drummers is one of the major facets of my work that sets me apart from “lead singers wife with a camera”.  This one was shot ambient because I wanted to capture the motion of his sticks. The real challenge is getting stick movement but not too much head (or worse, drums) movement.

ISO800 f/1.8 1/15s

I dearly love this shot.

I try very hard to not be obtrusive or a distraction when shooting a performance. My knees and butt are typically dirty after a shoot because I’m down low to stay out of the way of other spectators. Or I’m hugging against a wall, or I shoot as I walk  in front of the stage hoping to grab the composition but not stay in the way. Occasionally I can grab shots from behind the stage that turn out well, but I don’t do it frequently because my presence can be a distraction to the performers and the audience. This one of Fat Mike is another favorite from the day.

I love the lights on the brick wall and the smoke in the air. I love how the light wraps around him (flash on either side), and how the symbols help to frame him in.

I went home that night feeling like I’d done a good job and had definitely earned my fees.

Sunday at Creekside will have to be another (shorter, thankfully) post.

Promo shoot for a new salsa band, Lo’ Rumbero’. These are the vocalists.

Vernon Hairston @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival

Long Tall Deb & The Drifter Kings @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival

The horn section of Capital Sound @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival

The lead singer for Capital Sound @ Creekside Blues & Jazz Festival

More on each of these later.

When the day of the party arrived, I decided to relinquish control of the camera to the rest of the party-goers. Most of the guests are well aware of my photography habit, and I figured would not touch our camera without explicit permission. So I attached a piece of tape to the neck strap with the words “Please use me” written on both sides. There, permission granted. I set the camera on auto, put the 18-55mm kit lens on it, left it on a table with lens cap off, and trusted it to family and friends.

Now that’s not to say that I didn’t take any pictures. I took a few, especially of details that I was pretty sure others wouldn’t think to capture, such as the dragon cake that a neighbor made for me.

Interestingly, I don’t really care for this picture, and I think I’ll blame it on the fact that I had the camera in auto mode, and I made that a constraint of my own picture taking. I might have been able to compose this picture more effectively and left the camera in auto, but I was in a “snapshot” mentality and let that effect the quality of the shot.

I also took a picture that was completely unique to my perspective at the party–cakes in front of me and most of the assembled crowd ready to sing happy birthday to me.

I just could not resist taking this picture–most birthday pictures are from the crowd’s perspective as the celebrant blows out the candles. I wanted to capture the moment from the other side of the cake (no candles–too many for fire code).

There were some interesting technical problems for some folks who weren’t accustomed to using a dSLR. The most noticeable was that several people expected to compose the shot on the LCD like on most P&S cameras, rather than looking through the viewfinder. Related to this problem–a couple of people had difficulty looking through the viewfinder completely, and as such saw only about 1/3 of the scene. This caused them to compose the shot very awkwardly with the subjects at the side of the photo. Finally, my dad tried to take some pictures inside and the bill of his hat kept the flash from fully popping up, which meant it didn’t fire, though the camera was expecting it to, resulting in blurry under-exposed pictures.

But despite the minor technical problems, there were a number of fun pictures thanks to the camera handling abilities of friends and family. And it was a nice opportunity for me to relax and not be the one always behind the camera.

Thanks to everyone who took pictures, and everyone who helped celebrate my birthday. It was a lot of fun.