Band Promo Shots

After about two hours of shot selection, post processing and re-post processing, I've got a series of promo shots and headshots for my friend's band. I've shot them before but this was outdoor shots, and properly lit indoor work as opposed to the dive bar from last time.

The band members have changed up a bit too, so I was shooting some of them for the first time.

First, we did a quick series of headshots for promo use. I shot this with a three light setup: Key to camera high left, fill to camera low right and hair light subject high right and behind, all fired with pocket wizards. The key light was shooting through the Lumiquest SB3, the fill in a 43" shoot-through umbrella, and the hairlight was snooted with a Honl collapsable snoot.

All headshots were taken with the 70-200 at focal lengths around 130mm.

Lead singer - Jack


Lead guitar - JJ


Bass - Keith


Drums - Mitch


After, we headed out into the Winnipeg winter and shot some outdoor group shots. We hit the back roads and went looking for trucks, tractors, or wide open spaces.

Initially, we shot a bit on a nearby back road, but there was a bit of a lack of interest in the shots. One worked well enough to keep, but Mitch had stepped slightly forward in the frame. Not a huge deal, but noticeable and annoying in the shot to my eye:



A quick note on this shot and the following ones. I sharpened in post, cranked up the contrast and colour and then applied a very light texture from Totally Rad Actions called 'Dirt Bag'. This is a bluegrass band, and they wanted a rough look to the shots, and I found that this touch helped to capture the feel.

Our big break came when a friendly trucker gave us ten minutes or so to shoot with his rig while he was in a service station. We moved quickly, picked a few angles and started shooting:







My favourite shot of this session was taken down low, at a wide angle, with (to my eye) the best composition of the session. I'm quite fond of this one:



I just wish I had got that one boot all the way in frame! Gah!

Anyhow, thanks for reading, I'd love any opinions on these shots!

Secret of the Ooze

Day 53 of my Project 365 rolls around, and I am sitting on a big pile of green, red and blue ice cubes. I can't help play around with them.

I wanted to see what they would look light heavily backlit, so I rigged up a clear plastic berry dish on some of my daughter's Megabloks (high tech all the way here) and used that to place my 580EX II underneath, triggered with my Pocket Wizards. Killed the lights, set up a black screen around it to keep out any ambient, and shot from above:



ISO 100, f/10, 1/60th shutter. I can't help it. Every time I see this, I think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movies. I have some other ideas for these cubes, so hope you don't mind a new shot with them every now and then. They are fun to play with.

On a more serious note, I am very, very close to registering a small business and trying my hand at some simple part-time portraiture work. Some of the people I have done shots for are prepared to give me referrals and it would help to finance some new equipment if I could write off purchases against that income. It's not an unreasonable idea... I hope.

A Splash of Colour

Day 50, and this has to be a quick post before I make dinner.

I finally found a flat-sided acrylic container to do more water shots with, and I had the idea to freeze some ice cubes with food colouring in them.

Add the two together, and this is the result:



f/25, ISO 100, 1/200th shutter. 580EX II on-camera at 1/2 power. I should have tried to lower the flash power and blow out the background more with a larger aperture, but I wanted to really freeze the action. Freeze. Ice. *snicker*

Really like this shot though. One of my best I think.