A Club Above the Rest

I'm sure that I'll shoot my good friend Charlie Slick more than once, and in the future, I'll have more tools to work with (I'm investing in an off-camera flash system very soon). This shoot taught me a lot of things. It taught me that my autofocus helper light doesn't help a lot at Charlie's shows, and that my own manual focusing abilities need some work. It also taught me that my on-camera flash can be useful (all of these shots use it, and no shots without it were usable), but most importantly, it taught me that I need better flash. I'll be dropping around 900 bucks on an upgrade soon.

This is the clearest shot of Mr. Slick from the night, and thankfully his stage lighting and the composition worked together to make an interesting shot!

I was trying to get a focused in shot of Charlie, but I ended up getting this dancing dude. A the club itself, I thought the guy looked, well, silly, but he made a good photo.

This shot would be just so much better if Charlie were more in focus and not the tattooed girl in the front.

So, I tried out that first shot in black and white, cranked up the contrast a little more . . I'm not sure which one I like more. I'd love to hear your opinions.

Proof of concept

I've been in bands. Several of them. I've also played at The Elbow Room, at which the sound board guy tends to take lots of pictures and later post them on the venue's site. These photos are often intollerably flat, washed out, grainy, or all of the above. I once thought that this was simply due to the fact that the stage was dark, and, well, what are you gonna do? Here's a suggestion: set your camera up correctly. Here are what even a novice like me can accomplish after just a little bit of calibration.

These are not the greatest show shots ever, but they're a lot better than The Elbow Room's.