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!

A quiet fall walk...

Have I mentioned that we like to go to Fort Whyte Alive? I think this is our fourth trip this year.

It's nice to get out, walk for an hour or so with the kids, take the camera out for a while, and get some fresh air. I didn't spend as much time shooting this trip, but I still managed a few shots that I liked:

Autumn Path


Curious Red Squirrel


Shaking Off


Three posts this week. That has to be some kind of record :)

Miscellaneous vacation shots...

Well, I'm back home but I'm not quite ready to take up the mantle of the 365 again tonight. Unpacking, laundry, settling the kids... Well, my night is pretty full.

Anyhow, I have a few more miscellaneous shots from the vacation to share, and just to get back in the rhythm one of them is a backyard songbird!

We visited a hobby farm called Puck's Farm which I remember visiting from my childhood. The place seems a bit more rundown than I recall as a kid, but that may just be the haze of childhood nostalgia at work.

Here are two landscape/animal shots I took that day:





I took one family shot there as well. My mother and daughter were sharing a quiet moment in an old building on the back side of the property, and I wanted to shoot it as a silhouette. It worked out fairly well, but the foreground was still fairly strongly lit:



When I was shooting the backyard portraits, the kids were also quite enthusiastically enjoying the swingset, and I took a few shots from the deck at the long end of the 70-200, and I liked this little gem:



Finally, as promised, a backyard bird. My parents are also bird lovers, and they are lucky enough to have some wonderful specimens visit their house regularly. On this trip, a male Cardinal was visiting quite regularly, but he never got particularly close. This was the best shot I managed with the 70-200 and the 1.4x TC:



Thanks again for reading!

Fort Whyte Alive

Day 128 involved a nice day trip to Fort Whyte Alive, a waterbird and wildlife preserve here in Winnipeg. We went towards the end of the day, and we only managed about and hour of time on the trails, maybe even a bit less.

I wanted a chance to take the new lens out for a tour, and to be honest I can't say it lived up to my expectations. I think I was spoiled by renting the f/2.8 IS version. The f/4 does have serious price and weight advantages but for image quality, I think there isn't much comparison.

In fact, this one is going back on Monday, and I'm going to renew my search for a used f/2.8 IS.

Here are the pictures that I kept from the trip:

Red-winged Blackbird


Sparrow


Nesting Goose


Map Turtle


Reflecting Goose


Cattail


Red-winged Blackbird in flight


American Robin


Muskrat - #1


Muskrat - #2


Goose saying goodbye


I can't complain too much about the sharpness of the lens, but I just don't see the definition that I saw in the 2.8 and I don't know if it's the lack of stabilization or the quality of the 2.8s glass. So, my next lens will have both :)

Winnipeg means snow!

For day 37, my temporarily beloved 24-70 and I went out to shoot light trails. Just one problem: Snow.

I do live in a winter city, so trekking through knee-deep snow to set up a tripod on a snow drift is just second nature, but for long exposures, it *kills* any sharpness you night have had. Add to that the slippery roads reducing traffic, and my light trail shooting had to be aborted early. I also don't have a weather-sealed body so I was using my hat to keep the body dry.

This is the best shot of the night:



Not terrible, but you can see the lack of sharpness if you look at the railing on the overpass, and not once did I manage to get traffic coming and going at the same time.

Today's lesson, take what you can get.

The rich part of town...

For day 35, a friend and I went down to Wellington Crescent during lunch to see what we could see. In the summer, I'll be returning there to shoot some of the grand old churches, but today was about frost, snow and things that are red.

I kept three pictures out of about 15 I took, and three of the four subjects I shot had keepers. My average is getting better.

Shot number one:



This old tree is in front of an old red brick building. You don't see a lot of brick in Winnipeg as the extreme hot/cold swings we get are very hard on them. In the wealthier parts of town though, brick rules. This building has had some modern HVAC bolted on to it and the exhaust blows right over this tree causing dense frost crystals to form.

Shot two is the result of the same exhaust:



I think I like this better than the branch shot, the depth of field adds an element, and the wonky leaning fence is kind of charming as well. It lacks in colour, but I think the sparkle of the frost would be lost in a monochrome conversion.

Finally, across the street is this view:



I'm an absolute sucker for repeating patterns and shapes, so these doors really caught my eye. I tried a few crops removing the road and/or the fire hydrant, but I like the way the road leads the eye across the shot. Your opinion may vary, please let me know if you think so.

All in all the 24-70 performed fairly well, but it's a beast of a lens to lug around.

The World in White.

Day 19, and nature provided for today's shots.

Last night we had a lovely blast of warm humid air which became an ice fog and left the entire city coated in hoarfrost this morning. It was a busy day, but I managed to squeeze in some time for a walk around.

I found a good walking area just off of a major road not too far from home. I had taken some other shots in the area around the house, but I wanted shots without buildings everywhere. The area in these shots is actually surrounded by power lines and apartment buildings but I was able to choose my shots and keep the backgrounds mostly clean.

I still need to work on my landscape composition quite a bit, but these shots are decent, I think.

#1:

ISO 200, f/4.5, 1/1600th

#2:

ISO 200, f/4.5, 1/1250th

#3:

ISO 200, f/11, 1/160th