Complete Circle...

[cdifoto]

...was the name of the band playing. Lead guitar/singer is a friend from when we were about 12-13 years old. Consider these to be like rough cut lumber. All I've done is a quickie white balance correction because the lights were pure red and USM 10/60/0 for the bit of haze, and USM 100/.3/0 to sharpen a tad. I haven't done true white balance corrections...because I bounced flash different ways, thus infecting the shots with varying degrees of the red. I worked these in batch. I also haven't cropped anything or adjusted to the point I would call them distributable. I'm not really in a rush either because it wasn't a paying gig. This was just to see if I could even get the compositions and timing. Better lighting technique to be learned and practiced had later. Hopefully.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0027.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0028.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0036.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0071.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0074.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0127.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0129.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0135.jpg

[cdifoto]

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0148.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0158.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0175.jpg

[24Peter]

Don - they look great! Good job. :)

Your stuff looks sharper than before. Are you noticing a difference since you got it back?

[cdifoto]

Don - they look great! Good job. :)

Your stuff looks sharper than before. Are you noticing a difference since you got it back?

Thanks Pete!

It seems a lot more accurate now. More on the keeper side than the trash bin. Not 100% of course...but no cameras are 100%. I did have the benefit of the IR beam from the flash too...but I was also using the weaker AF points most of the time as well. Overall I'm quite happy. The black XT, 24-70L, and bracket mounted flash played real nice tonight.

On another interesting note. Some random woman walked up to to me..quite nice looking actually...and told me she wants me to shoot her naked on a motorcycle. She took my business card and left after I asked if she was serious and not totally wasted.

Should be an interesting shoot if she really WAS serious...

[cdifoto]

Had to shower....I hate smelling like smoke at home. bleh.

Again these are uncropped and the only white balancing I did was the estimate button in RSP. No levels or exposure adjustments either. I'll do all that later when I edit for real for the CD.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0064.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0085.jpg

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a304/cdifoto/completecircle/2006-04-20-0121.jpg


Dang near all the shots are in sharp focus...or at least close enough for a good size print. The problem is very few of my shots are nice compositions. :o

[aparmley]

Looks like the camera lens and flash played well tonight for you! You must be thrilled to have them back and working well together. . .


were they playing in a house?

Thats a damn shame about the fifty - If you remeber my post a few months ago I had a hard time focusing in a room only lit by a television and a distant lamp - but your right its not the lens' fault just poor lighting.

[coldrain]

Nice photos, but I do feel with band pictures like this that you should not correct white balance like that. The light in there was not white... and you making it white kills the atmosphere quite a lot. It is like they are playing aoutside in indirect sunlight. Maybe I am wrong, and that was actually the case! haha... But that is the problem I have with whitebalance correction... how to correct when your eys adjust partly... so the photo looks too yellow when not corrected, but the photo looks too "not as it was" when you totally correct and make white white, when it was not white in teh first place.

[cdifoto]

Nice photos, but I do feel with band pictures like this that you should not correct white balance like that. The light in there was not white... and you making it white kills the atmosphere quite a lot. It is like they are playing aoutside in indirect sunlight. Maybe I am wrong, and that was actually the case! haha... But that is the problem I have with whitebalance correction... how to correct when your eys adjust partly... so the photo looks too yellow when not corrected, but the photo looks too "not as it was" when you totally correct and make white white, when it was not white in teh first place.

It's kind of a touchy area. The light was red. Not yellow. No tungsten lighting. But they looked like zombies with red skin. To me that's not ambience. That's just f*cked up lighting. IMO ambience in a place like that would be colored strobes behind and all around them but correct skin tones. Since there were no colored strobes all around them, it's just regular lighting then.

[coldrain]

Yes, I understand what you mean. It is like there is no right way to do it... when the light stinks from the start.

[cdifoto]

Yes, I understand what you mean. It is like there is no right way to do it... when the light stinks from the start.

Yeah. If there had been just enough lighting to give me some contrast for AF (you know how hard/impossible MF is with the tunnel vision on an XT) I woulda used the prime and no flash. Oh well. This was more of a timing/composition quiz for myself than a lighting one.

[jwhite]

Just a couple of musical questions/comments :) Playing bass is also something I do besides my photography hobby.

Did they actually have two bass guitarists going at the same time? How'd that sound? I don't know if I've ever seen that.

Looks like one of the bass guitarists broke a string or was replacing one. How did that happen? Those things are pretty tough.

Jason

[cdifoto]

Just a couple of musical questions/comments :) Playing bass is also something I do besides my photography hobby.

Did they actually have two bass guitarists going at the same time? How'd that sound? I don't know if I've ever seen that.

Looks like one of the bass guitarists broke a string or was replacing one. How did that happen? Those things are pretty tough.

Jason

They switched out. The guy with the blue shirt was a friend and just stepped up, and the lead singer handed him his guitar. The singer kept singing w/o his guitar while the other guy played. It was pretty informal. I don't know how he broke the string. It was so dark I didn't even see it was broken until I got home and uploaded the photo.

I imagine 2 basses would sound pretty bad. lol.

[ReF]

I asked if she was serious and not totally wasted.

you didn't actaully ask her that did you?:eek:

[cdifoto]

you didn't actaully ask her that did you?:eek:

Not in so many words, but yeah. I wanted to be certain she wasn't too drunk to know what she was saying. I put it a little more *professionally* though.

[jwhite]

They switched out. The guy with the blue shirt was a friend and just stepped up, and the lead singer handed him his guitar. The singer kept singing w/o his guitar while the other guy played. It was pretty informal. I don't know how he broke the string. It was so dark I didn't even see it was broken until I got home and uploaded the photo.

I imagine 2 basses would sound pretty bad. lol.

Yeah, I would think two basses wouldn't sound good either, unless they really knew how to play off each other.

[jamison55]

Your flash technique was great...for a party or wedding. For a band, I'd like to see more dramatic lighting. Yours was nice and even...and flat. A video light would be perfect for this. Get a hot naked chick on a motorcycle to hold the vid light off to the side a bit to add some shadows. If you don't have a hot naked chick on a motorcycle or a video light, put your flash on your off-shoe cord with an omnibounce. Hold the flash in your left hand way off to the side, and your camera in you right hand, and shoot the flash pretty much straight on. Play with the position of the flash...high, low, left, low-left, etc. You could also gel your flash to add some color to the scene. Red gel + sidelighting would be bad @ss...

[cdifoto]

Your flash technique was great...for a party or wedding. For a band, I'd like to see more dramatic lighting. Yours was nice and even...and flat. A video light would be perfect for this. Get a hot naked chick on a motorcycle to hold the vid light off to the side a bit to add some shadows. If you don't have a hot naked chick on a motorcycle or a video light, put your flash on your off-shoe cord with an omnibounce. Hold the flash in your left hand way off to the side, and your camera in you right hand, and shoot the flash pretty much straight on. Play with the position of the flash...high, low, left, low-left, etc. You could also gel your flash to add some color to the scene. Red gel + sidelighting would be bad @ss...

Since I don't own a video light, I guess I should have nailed 'em with direct flash eh? I wasn't really sure what to do because I didn't have any cool ambience to work with. It was just straight up dark. I'll try some direct hits or swing the bracket off to the side in wacky non-bounce ways to see what I can get next time. Only thing that's short enough to use in there was the 24-70 so the one handed shooting with flash in other woulda been a bit impossible for my scrawny arse. I'll give different direct techniques a go though.

Did I at least do alright on my compositions? I couldn't even see through the viewfinder. I had to just kinda watch for the faint outline of arm movements and such to try to get my timing decent.

[aparmley]

Since I don't own a video light, I guess I should have nailed 'em with direct flash eh? I wasn't really sure what to do because I didn't have any cool ambience to work with. It was just straight up dark. I'll try some direct hits or swing the bracket off to the side in wacky non-bounce ways to see what I can get next time. Only thing that's short enough to use in there was the 24-70 so the one handed shooting with flash in other woulda been a bit impossible for my scrawny arse. I'll give different direct techniques a go though.

Did I at least do alright on my compositions? I couldn't even see through the viewfinder. I had to just kinda watch for the faint outline of arm movements and such to try to get my timing decent.

I've never shot anything like that Don. I couldn't tell ya. It appears that you've done a great job given the lighting. Head over to FM - They have a few guys that shot a ton of bands - you might be able to pick up something or even get some feedback from those who do it all the time. . . :cool: but I still think walking away from that with keepers is a job well done.

[jamison55]

Did I at least do alright on my compositions? I couldn't even see through the viewfinder. I had to just kinda watch for the faint outline of arm movements and such to try to get my timing decent.

Awww, dude, don't get get me wrong, your focus and composition are spot on. I especially like the shot of the guitarist with the cigarette!

[aparmley]

I looked at them again; 2,6,8,12,14 are my favorites of the series. . . I don't know if they could have gotten better than those shots. ;)

[cdifoto]

Thanks guys. I have my entire gallery of keepers at www.cdi-ink.com/cclive now, albeit smaller and higher compression for the dial uppers. Did what I could with white balance although I noticed a few could even be redone yet again. I kept some of the red in them this time to help remove the cold look some of 'em had.