black and white

Roundhouse Kick: Day at the New Mexico Legislative Session.

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New Mexico is at the tail of end of the 60 day legislative session and for the most part it has just passed me by. I’ve wanted to go all semester for the show I work for (New Mexico in Focus) but regrettably I have class all week so it was impossible for me to get up to the Round House. However because it was spring break I requested to tag along as a production assistant, but I ended up doubling as a Behind the Scenes photographer because that’s what I like to do.

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We went down the day after the controversial “Right-to-Work” bill was tabled in commodity before going to the Senate floor, so we went in to discuss the death of the bill considering that huge amount of attention that it had accumulated. Surprisingly we found many of the people we needed for these interviews, such as a sponsor of the bill and someone who as been avidly against the legislation, within a few minutes of getting there.

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The thing I enjoyed most about going to Santa Fe was getting to watch my producer Sarah Guestavus, professor/Corespondent Gwyneth Doland, and graphics master/cameraman Antony Lostetter work in such a fast paced and stressful environment, something that they handled collaboratively and masterfully to the point where it could only be described as awe inspiring.

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Like anything else in a production field there is a lot of time spent sitting around with nothing to do, and this trip was no different. At a lot of points it felt we were just waiting but it was an excellent opportunity to get to know some of the people I work with. I get to spend a lot of time with the other student employees who are some of the most talented people I have ever been around, but the upper level employees have so much more expertise and it was a treat to get to pick their brains.

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Shooting at the Round House was an interesting experience. Dealing with people moving around and recording in rooms with heavy amounts of echo left a lot to deal with. However we managed very well in the conditions and some of these problematic conditions let the recordings feel more organic.

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To cap off the day we got an interview with the New Mexico’s Secretary of Education, Hanna Skandera to discus the controversial PARCC testing that many students have protested taking.

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I’m glad I finally got to go out to Santa Fe this semester and hopefully next time I’m out there I’ll be actually reporting on the legislative session and am not just going along for the ride.

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First Shoot of 2015 Tara Noir.

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The first shoot of this year I wanted to do something that was super stylized and different from what I’m used to doing. I came up with the concept of a classic black and white portrait session in a sort of neo-noir setting.

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Most of the shots that were done inside of my apartment using a 1k light with a soft box balanced for daylight as a key and a 60 watt lamp with a indoor balanced bulb as a back light creating some contrast. Now some of my images came out a little on the under exposed side, but by shooting in raw and making sure I was at least close enough to retain detail, it wasn’t hard to save files in Lightroom where I tone all my images.

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A ballsy move on my part was trying to shoot at f:2 on my 85mm f1.8 and 50mm f1.8 in an attempt to get the depth of field as shallow as I could so I could blow out the backgrounds in order to keep some of the things in the background from seeming out of place. The reason this is so ballsy is because you run the risk of not getting your photos in focus properly making images look soft. However I feel like I managed that problem well.

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What I wanted to accomplish with this shoot was to actually have a solid concept and style for me to shoot for as opposed to doing what I normally do which is to just show up to a location with whatever the model is already wearing and just messing around until I find something that works. I believe that goal was reached and I hope to take this experience and try and apply that into future shoots by already having a concept in mind. One thing that I can improve on though is keeping a better attention to detail and making sure everything in the scene fits as so that way I don’t have to shoot at f2 to make the image look right.

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Photographing Live Music and Working with the Situation You are Given.

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Concerts are designed specifically to be a listening experience where you get to hear music coming out in it’s rawest form. Instead of having a compressed sound file play out of your speaker you have the true source in front of you blasting the sound for the entire room to move to. This experience however is not built for photography.

The lighting is often dim, made to be highly stylized for the audience’s enjoyment but not so much for a camera sensor. You are confined to a space where you can’t get up close and personal with the subject, whether you’re in the pit or back stage. You’re compositions needs to be tight in order to keep gear and moving band member out of the way to get the shot. So at the end you just have to work with whatever you’ve been given and try to get the best shots possible.

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The first thing you have to keep in mind when shooting live music is time. Major bands will normally only give you 3 songs to shoot and then you’re done. Others are just short set list where they only get 3 songs to begin with. The main way around this is to not only shoot when the band is playing. You should be willing to shoot during the set up, between songs and get the band members interactions between songs. The one thing you always have to do as a photographer is to be ready for anything and capture the moment.

The time tip is relatively situational being that if you’re shooting a smaller band you might have more than 3 songs. But one thing you will have to deal with is the lack of space to work with. If you’re in the photo pit with tons of other photographers you have multiple things you need to consider; Where are all the other photographers, What gives you the best shooting lanes to get a variety of shots and what lens you want on your camera. In the pit the best lens choice that I can think of personally is a 70-200 2.8 to give the sense that you’re right there up close to them with your shots. However using a wide angle can be useful in order to get the entire band in frame and give the photo grander context. But at the end of the day you got to do the best with what you got.

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The biggest pain in the ass is going to be getting photos of the drummer. The drummer is all the way at the back of the stage with the worse lighting and with the most of amount of thing in your way. If you are able to get good shots of the drummer more power to you but it’s one of the most difficult things to shoot and often they are out of the way of the action.

So we discussed getting your shots in and getting them composed properly now how do we get the proper exposure. Most shows are going to have terrible lighting.  Most show lighting is built around to be a visual experience but it doesn’t translate well on camera. The two work around to this problem is high ISO and processing the images in black and white. Shooting at high ISO will of course bring in the grain and cause problems in the color detail. So when the light is so dim and giving off strange colors the the sensor can’t process, well black and white is a great solution.

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Just because the lighting is a challenge doesn’t mean you can’t use it creatively. When a show does use some kind of creative lighting can cause creative flaring  and even hair line highlights. and when processing in black and white it you don’t have to worry about the tones.

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The main thing to remember is to have fun and not every shot is going to be perfect. You’ll take some good ones some bad ones but every now and again you’ll get some great ones. You just got to keep shooting.

Live Music Photo Editing

By request of a close friend of mine I went to shoot a live performance of his band. Concert photography can be complicated and difficult because it backs you into corners and the lighting is usually sub par. So with careful edits you can make or break these photos. Watch my Lightroom editing process in the video.