Roger Clyne and P.H. Naffah from Roger Clyne & The Peacemakers performed at the With One Breath benefit at O’Gara’s in St. Paul, MN.
Heather helped out on a few — enjoy (be sure to click on the thumbnails):
Browsing Posts in Live Music
Steel Orchid is a 80s rock cover band located in the Twin Cities area. Dave (guitarist/keyboardist/vocalist) is a colleague of mine at my “day job” and accepted my offer to take a few pictures. They performed at Majors Sports Café in Bloomington, MN on 5/8/2010.
The slideshow is here:
Steel Orchid at Majors Sports Café on 5/8/2010
Here are a few pictures from the set:
I recently purchased an Expodisc Neutral (72mm) and this event was my first experience trying it out. It worked wonderfully with the Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 and Nikon 50mm f/1.4, but did not work well with the Nikon 55-200 f/4-5.6. Since I could not stand on the stage to get the light readings directly, I pointed the lens vaguely toward the light cans. For most of the shots, it saved me considerable time in post messing with white balance levels.
Received an e-mail from Brian today asking me if I still had the photos from his gig opening for GB Leighton. Here are two shots:
This was my first use of the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens in low-light. I used Lightroom Beta 3 to clean up some of the noise and brighten the colors.
My band played up in the Duluth, MN area a couple of weekends back.
Click here for pictures. Click here for info on the band (including two new demo tracks).
Heather helped me make up some Shutterfly books with pictures from the GB Leighton gig on 1/30/2010 to give to the band. I went to their gig last night at Bogart’s in Apple Valley with the intention of dropping off the books, catching a few songs, and heading home…and ended up taking more pictures and staying the whole night. Here they are:
GB Leighton on 3/6/2010 at Bogart’s
A colleague from work (Brian) and his wife (Kelly) were also there, seen here with guitarist Luke Kramer:
It was a decent shoot. The D200 with 17-50 f/2.8 and 50 f/1.4 lenses helped quite a bit, as I chose to lock in the auto ISO to go no higher than 800 to keep the “noise machine” that is the D200 at higher ISOs from getting too wild. Some of the bright stage lights reminded me that the UV filter on the 50 f/1.4 is pretty heavily scratched, so I’ll swap that out before I use it next time.
The band does occasional outdoor gigs in the summer, so I hope to catch one of those. For those that have never heard of them, be sure to check out their website at gbleighton.com. They’re a friendly bunch of guys (and gal) and put on a terrific show. Catch them live or order a CD or five!
The church I attend has a violinist as part of its congregation. His daughter (Pam) asked if I’d be willing to record him with piano and vocal accompaniment. I have recording gear (band plug: Public Static) and thought it would be neat, and also knew I could get some great candid shots of Fritz, Pam, and Megan (the pianist).
My friend, colleague, and bandmate Nick Reid helped out and also took some shots with his Canon gear. I can definitely learn a lot from Nick, since he’s far more artistic and has an extremely keen & gifted eye. The below pictures were from the event; I took all but the last four, taken by Nick:
Here are some pictures taken at last evening’s gig:
The Claimstakers at St. Patrick Tavern, New Prague, MN
One of my favorites was taken with the Nikon 50mm at f/2:
Thanks to Mike, Todd, Neal, John, and Tracy of The Claimstakers for being such great sports!
With the help of friend-of-the-band Willy, I attempted to recreate an outside-flash-through-a-window technique as mentioned in The Hot Shoe Diaries by Joe McNally. I failed pretty miserably, as evident in the pictures toward the end of the set above. I only tried it once and didn’t want to subject Willy to too much Minnesota winter. I believe the SB-800 was configured really poorly, and that’s due to the fact that, well, I have a lot to learn about the SB-800.
Overall, an extremely enjoyable shoot. I’ve been fortunate to have extremely kind and patient subjects so far.
The band also invited me to sit in on drums for the last set. Aside from butchering the intro to Evil Ways (Santana) not once but twice, I think I did okay. [ Gratuitous self-promoting plug: I'm also in the band Public Static. ]
