An evening at a dive bar...

Day 84 of my Project 365 and I'm hanging out with musicians at a dive bar. It was a lot more fun than it sounds, and the band and crowd were all good natured as I got my shots.

The lighting in the bar was really, really awful. I expected it to be a bit tricky, but the entirety of the lighting was four gelled spot lights for a five piece band. Yikes.

I was never so happy to have a lens that could open as wide as f/1.4. The lighting made the soccer arena seem like noon at the equator. Still, this is a challenge, and I decided to play with the lighting where I could and just accept that shots from a dive bar are going to be a bit crappy. If push really came to shove, I could always monochrome them anyhow.

So, I took about 300 exposures in shutter priority at 1/40th and 1/50th hoping to keep blur down a bit, and let the aperture come in where it could. Most shots are somewhere between f/1.4 and f/2.8 at ISO 800, so depth of field was super tight, and focus issues abounded in the shots. Still, I managed a fair number of good ones, and I'll call it a success.

Here are some shots from the show:

Guitarist Curt:


Drummer Beau:


Bassist Keith:


Guitarist Joe:


Vocals/Guitarist Jack:


My favourite shot so far as I sort through the RAWs was actually taken pre-show when they were setting up and tuning. I got a few nice shots during this time, so I hope to pull quite a few keepers from them.



As always, your comments are more than welcome!