Last Saturday night I was on hand to photograph not one but two wonderful artists at Sound Bites Grill in Sedona, Arizona.
Part of my job there is to capture the musicians live on stage and create artwork for the Sound Bites Grill ‘Wall of Fame’. The other part of my gig is to create ‘straight’ photography images to help in promotion and things like press releases for when the artist returns for a future performance.
Here’s a description from his web site where you can check out his music. (I particularly like ‘Everlasting Desire’!) “Propulsive, melodic rock guitar in the hands of Grant Ferguson is a powerful reminder of the instrument’s glory days. Influenced by some of the great axe masters: Jeff Beck, Gary Moore, The Edge and others, Ferguson is pushing his all-instrumental sound toward a new rock vision.”
Grant Ferguson makin’ some beautiful sounds flow from his guitar. – Camera Lumix GX8
Live on stage at Sound Bites – Camera Lumix GH4
Grant captured with the new Lumix GX8. All images used the Lumix 35-100mm f2.8 lens
Following Grant’s set there was a break and we heard from Blues guitarist Leroy Miller.
A little about Leroy from his web site. Check his music (Try Over You from the self titled album) “Los Angeles blues sensation Leroy Miller has worked on countless recordings for music’s brightest stars like John Mayer, Macy Gray and Smash Mouth. Leroy has toured all over the world as a supporting act for bands such as Aerosmith and the Dave Mathews Band.”
Leroy Miller got the crowd up and dancing with his high energy rock guitar. Camera GX8
Leroy Miller – Camera Lumix GH4
Leroy Miller wailin’ it! Camera GH4
In putting the images together I make conversions to black and white for all of the press images. This guarantees the best look when printed on a press. If someone just converts a color image to grayscale the reproduction of the detail can get lost especially in newspaper reproduction. I often use Google’s NIK Silver FX Pro 2 for making the conversions. It gives me lots of options to make the Black & White have tones from light to dark without getting muddy or flat.
On this shoot I tried out the new Lumix GX8 for the first time under LED stage lights to see how it held up to the dark shadow areas and the lack of full spectrum in the stage lighting. I was impressed. While I would replace my GH4 camera with the GX8 I wouldn’t hesitate to use it as a back-up or grab it in a pinch. The quality of the images wouldn’t suffer one bit.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – I’ll show the Grant and Leroy’s ‘Wall of Fame’ images in a couple days.
Our local entertainment newspaper/magazine used one of my images on the cover. The cover story is Guitarist Sir Harrison playing at Sound Bites Grill in Sedona.
Oh wait! It’s not Elvis it’s Chance Tinder’s tribute to Elvis with the Kentucky Rain Band and it was at Sound Bites Grill the other night. But, you wouldn’t know it wasn’t the King. Chance has a great Elvis voice but doesn’t go hooky with it. He’s very interactive with the audience and from my perch in the back I could see almost everyone dancing in their seats. And, scarves were being shared with women who were willing to head on up to the stage and share some dance moves. Chance is very much the professional actor. Here’s a description from his web site…
Chance’s secret is believing that it’s not always the voice, that plays the most important part, but it’s knowing exactly how to become the man himself on that stage! It’s basically the attitude of Elvis Presley… Shy but confident… Knowing exactly what he’s doing. Chance isn’t an ‘impressionist’ doing a spin Elvis Presley. Rather he’s Chance Tinder, the actor, recreating a character… Much like actor ‘Joaquin Phoenix’ portraying ‘Johnny Cash’, or entertainer/actor ‘Jamie Foxx’ re-creating the great ‘Ray Charles’.
Chance Tinder as Elvis live on Stage at Sound Bites Grill with a bit of artwork by yours truly for the ‘Wall of Fame’.
Man I can’t recommend catching this show enough. Lots of fun and memories seemed to appear out of the air taking me back in time.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – Same basic gear, settings and post production as in this post.
Just before leaving town to judge images for a week at an International Competition I photographed Sedona restaurant Sound Bites Grill who hosted Rockin’ guitarist Jennifer Batten to a packed house. Jennifer has some serious licks! She plays to a sound track that allows her guitar to shine. In addition there’s a video show to accompany each song. If you like great hard rock and blues guitar and you see her coming to town, don’t miss her!
Images were captured with the Lumix GH4 and 35-100mm f2.8 lens ISO 3200 f2.8 1/50 sec. with -2/3 stop exposure compensation in Aperture Priority Mode. The GH4 is able to retain the lighting from LED lights yet still not block up shadows.
Jennifer’s Sound Bites Grill ‘Wall of Fame’ image. This image uses my ‘Photo-Synthesis’ technique of blending Layers and textures.
Batten live on stage during the show with video in background. Used NIK Silver FX Pro 2 for black and white conversion.
Art print from the restaurant of Michael Jackson with Jennifer. See her video below with Jackson for a taste of her hard rockin’ guitar.
New addition for the Sound Bites Grill ‘Wall of Fame’ in today’s post.
These musicians all reside on the Wall individually but they assembled into a great jazz/pop group and are playing Sunday nights at SBG. I saw them last week with my wife Holly and stayed until the last song was played. Eric Miller is a songwriter/singer/guitarist and is one of our favorite local artists. Eddie Barrattini bangs on the drums. Troy Perkins plays excellent bass on a guitar that he built himself.
From left Troy Perkins, Eddie Barattini and Eric Miller
It’s pretty amazing the musical talent we have living and performing here in Sedona!
Images were captures with the * Lumix GH4 and the 35-70mm f2.8 Lumix Vario lens. The GH4 has enough density range to capture detail in the shadows yet still have enough information in the highlights that are created with LED stage lighting. The tough part about photographing LED lighting is that the colors are very pure and don’t have a large spectrum of color as when we photographed tungsten lighting with gels over them.
The individuals were isolated by selecting and Masking in Photoshop. The individual Layers were then blended together with multiple texture images to create the final art in a process I call Photo-Synthesis.
Jazz singer Vivian Sessoms entertained at Sound Bites Grill the other night and here’s her image for the SBG ‘Wall of Fame’.
Vivian Sessoms in art treatment for the ‘Wall of Fame’
I was testing the new Lumix G7 side by side with the Lumix GH4. Both cameras used the same lens and same settings. ISO 3200 f2.8 1/60th sec. It shows me they are comparable and the G7 would make a great back up for the GH4. Price makes this a cool camera for those on a budget. The G7 does miss out on a few pro features on handling, like having to remove a tripod plate to get to the battery and SD card compartment. It also has smaller batteries and is built on a plastic body. But, image quality looks to be on a par. And, at half the price of the GH4 depending on your workload you might be willing to put up with a few non-pro features!
Here’s a sample of a couple stage captures from each camera with the same settings.
This image was captured with the Lumix G7.
Captured with the GH4.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
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