Shot In The Black

If you are going to be a rock photographer, get used to working in atrocious lighting conditions.

Yet the very difficulties caused by dark places and changing coloured strobes bring their own fantastic opportunities. I love ‘em. Don’t be afraid of bright colour and moving lights, embrace them. You can hide behind the lights, believe me. Alternatively, you can allow the performers to eclipse the light – and get the halo effect in the hair, like this shot of Joanne Shaw Taylor, a stunning and brilliant British blues guitarist at Byron Bay Bluesfest in 2012.

Joanne Shaw Taylor

If the lights are low and stagnant, this is a real bummer, especially so if you have been looking forward to getting some great shots, it’s the pits !

At the Sydney Blues Festival in 2010, Anikiko was appearing at Vault 146which was bathed in red light only. Hopeless. So, I whacked on the Nikon f/1.8 50mm, as it was the only way I could get a few decent shots on the Fuji S3 Pro ramped up to ISO 1600 1/60 sec, spot, manual. Sure the colours are all over the place – but that’s the way it really was. Just like this – with a blue-green reflection from somewhere
Anikoko

Reds are very challenging, so lights that are changing offer better opportunities in the paler blues if you can wait for the change. When you are stuck with red only, it’s a real problem.

Every venue is different (yikes) and the conditions may change significantly during the event. For example, at an open air festival, you might be able to get away with smaller apertures and a f/3.5-f/5.4 zoom lens during daylight, but you won’t get away with this after the sun goes down – you may be more restricted in choice of lens in the evenings.
Don’t be frightened about taking shots straight into the lights, as this can produce some stunning effects – just make sure that you focus on the eyes and meter (if you need to) on the faces.
Here’s shot of Jan Rynstaardt of Chase The Sunat Sydney Blues Festival … I know it is hugely hopeless in terms of a quality as fine art and technical achievement – but the portrait depicts the performer, and that’s what I am after .
Jan Rynsaardt

This shot under blue strobes was taken with the Fuji S3 Pro, 18-200mm lens at 135mm, f/5.6, ISO 1600 and 1/90 sec, manual mode, spot auto focus.
Generally, for festivals and also for pubs and all other gigs, I rely on just two lenses, the Nikon f/2.8 24-70mm lens if you can get right up the bracket and the f/2.8 70-200mm in other situations. I will have the f/1.8 50mm prime lens in the bag “just in case”.

In a few cases, the light is so bad, that the original image may be unusable. So, if the images have some merits, I sometimes adjust the white balance, temperature, tint, hue, exposure and saturation and make a few other modifications to take some colours out altogether to create an effect, that again depicts the subject by accentuating the drama of the moment or in some cases, show off their features.

Here are two examples … the first of Tex Perkins of The Cruel Sea, where I have saturated the green to add drama and changed luminance to get rid of the noise and plasticise the face …

Tex Perkins

… and the second of the stunning Taylor Dayne, who in her youth was all hair and kissers – who now looks just the same as she did at 25 but is twice that age – and still all lips and mane.. She was bathed in a blue light so instead of trying to change that, I exaggerated it so as to depict her remarkable features – some of which (so my daughter tells me) may have been reworked ..

Taylor Dayne

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 9th, 2012 at 10:08 pm. It is filed under How To Shoot Shows. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.