Jan 09
I’ve been meaning to shoot more concerts and less party. Last week I found out that I was thrown out of the party mania crew (without notice). I guess because I didn’t shoot the minimal 2 shoots per month they require, and I didn’t show up on Christmas night to do a party shoot in Paard van Troje.
Oh well, shit happens.
I got this gig thru 3voor12 Den Haag; they are concert oriented Dutch site, and it’s up to me how many shoots I do each month. The concert was on the 27th of december 2008.
The first shoot I did was Sabrina Starke in concert in Paard van Troje in the Hague. She has a beautiful voice, and it was a nice concert, but I didn’t really like the lighting. The LJ used too much red, in my opinion.
Sabrina’s performance was preceded by GMB (Gery Mendes Borges). Of all the pix I snapped I was most pleased by the one of GMB’s lead singer (the bands of both performances were badly lit). I tweaked it a little and removed a few stray colors splotches.
I also found out when I got home that I received an e-mail telling me that I didn’t have to go to the concert because they couldn’t get someone to review the concert. Oh well, I had a blast anyway.
Tagged with: 3voor12 • concert • Den Haag • Gery Mendes Borges • GMB • Paard van Troje
Sep 07
Partymania put me on the list for photographers to shoot at beatstad. But there were too many, so I told them I’d be their reserve photog. Then the owner of the website got a back problem and asked me to fill in.
We were supposed to only take pictures of the public, and some overview shots. So I took my nikon d300+strobe with me, my trusted 17-55 and my 10.5mm fisheye.
All went well, but it turned out we were allowed to shoot the performing artists. 
So there I was, practically plastered to the stand, trying to get some decent shots of the bands while the other photogs stood there with their 70-200 lenses getting all the close-ups. Bummer. But better than nothing I guess.
I took some pictures of Within Temptation and some of Live (who were rather timid and seemed frozen to the same spot for a ‘live’ band).
The picture I liked best has lots of negative space. It is one of the guitarists of Within Temptation. I just loved their light show. It is a bit of a crop though. I used the healing brush to remove the lead singer as one could see her silhouette to the right. I spiced up the colors as usual.
Tagged with: Beatstad • blue • concert • guitarist • negative space
Apr 11
Now Jazz ain’t really my thing, but I’m not opposed to it either. I’d always wanted to photograph the musicians on stage, and I was always envious of pictures I saw online made by my fellow photographers.
Last week Martijn called me to ask me to do him a favor. He’d ordered a new car, a yellow Saab convertible (I know, Saab’s are ugly cars) but he’d reckoned he couldn’t get it on time and attend a Jazz party his fraternity organized on Thursday the 10th of April called “Rotterdam Student jazz“. So he wanted to know if I could do it. After some thought I said yes.
I half expected it to go wrong; Martijn said that the organizer would contact me, which they didn’t.
And when I got to the door I had to retell my tale to three people before I talked to a guy who knew who I was and why I was there.
I shot the gig with my D200 with a 50mm f/1.4 and my D300 with a 85mm f/1.5, but after a quarter of an hour I put away my D200 as the pictures from my D300 were vastly better in my opinion. I love the 85mm f/1.4 – also know as “the Cream Machine” by nikonists who also own it. Together with the high noiseless iso 1600 and iso 3200 it makes a brilliant combo for concert photography.
The picture I chose is of a band called “the Young Sinatras” who diced out some good tunes. In the background you can see the singer (Paul van Kessel) looking at the trumpet player–that to me makes this a good picture. I did some sharpening on the final picture, but this is unnecessary on the original, which I printed out on A4 size with my photo printer. I did crop it a little, and pumped up the colors (what’d you expect? ). I also adjusted the blue hue as the translation from RAW to 8 bits sRGB introduced some ugly purple artefacts.
Tagged with: concert • jazz • Laurentius • music • Photography • student jazz • tunes • young sinatras
