Sound Bites Grill adds Melanie to the Wall of Fame
Remember Woodstock?
Me either. A little before my time.
But I do remember I grew up with a lot of music from that era. One of the artists recently appeared at Sound Bites in Sedona, Arizona. Melanie put on a fun show with a reprise of her classic hits like New Key and Look What They Done to My Song along with some newer material. Follow up with Melanie’s website here for more music info, tour dates, and history.
One of the benefits of being the house photographer at SBG is I have the opportunity to attend a lot of shows and view lots of entertainment. The other bonus is Stephen and Michele appreciate the work I do and allow me to create the art pieces from the live performances.
Melanie from her live performance at Sound Bites.
ORIGINAL CAPTURES WITH LUMIX GH4 35-100MM F2.8 VARIO LENS 1/40TH SEC F2.8 ISO 3200
Here’s the process. I photograph the performers through their show. Once images are downloaded, I cull the non-keepers. There can be quite a few of these due to blurred movement, changing lighting conditions, etc. Then I choose one that helps to tell the story, and I extract the performer from the image using Adobe Photoshop. I’ll open another file and import the extracted image. Then I’ll experiment with bringing in different textures as Layers. Changing the Blend Modes of the layers changes how they interact with the layers below. Layer Masks allow me to be selective about where changes will show. I have the artist sign their autograph and ‘message to the house’ in black marker on white paper. That is scanned and brought into the final art. That layer is inverted making the text white, and the Screen Mode is used to make the paper disappear.
Melanie & Family – Melanie has some incredibly talented progeny. They joined her on stage. Son Boe wails on the guitar. Daughter Jeordie is a singer/songwriter in her own right. (she’s playing some dates down the road in Phoenix in the next few days) All in all a great show.
You can see here that while the same general technique was used on both images, there is an entirely different ‘feel’ to the imagery. I enjoy the challenge of trying to do something a little different for all the art that hangs on the Wall of Fame. If you find yourself in Sedona stop by, grab some grub, and check out the ‘Wall’ in person.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
