by successfulbob | commercial photography, Lumix GH4, musician photography, people photography, photography, photography education, photography gear, photography lighting resources
I love working with musicians!
They are often solid creative people and have spent some time in front of a camera so getting good posing is not a chore. Good eye contact with the camera and an idea of the story they want told in the image makes for a fun photo shoot. Especially fine session with Valerie Romanoff of Starlight Orchestras who splits her time between New York, NY and Sedona, AZ.
Valerie was looking for images to use in her social media. Some images were set in the red rocks and some were during a live performances over in Cottonwood at the Main Stage venue. She performed with some great musicians as part of the Bottom Line Jam with host band Bottom Line. (Totally enjoyed the performance by the way!) When I was going through the first edit my wife Holly looked over my shoulder and said, “Oh my, she’s going to have a hard time choosing images! There are so many good ones.” I’d like to think it was mostly my skill, but Valerie is a skilled performer and is extremely photogenic!
Here are a few selects from the outdoor session…
The Path leads right to Valerie and Bell Rock is pointing right to her also…
With Courthouse Butte in the Background.
This is a pose idea I picked up from Peter Hurley (The Head Shot: Secrets to Creating Amazing Head Shot Portraits)
For the outdoor photo session I used my workhorse camera the Lumix GH4 with either the Lumix Vario 12-35mm or 35-100mm f2.8 lenses mounted. We had nice light a little after sunrise supplemented with a Paul C Buff mono light powered with a Vagabond Mini Lithium battery. Having power to take studio lights easily on location gits you enough flash power to control the scene. This was fitted with a 35″ foldable Octabox. In order to keep shape and form the flash was placed on the same side as the sun to not flatten out light.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
PS – Images from the Main Stage performance will be posted tomorrow
by successfulbob | fine art musician portrait, graphic design, Lumix GH4, musician photography, people photography, photography creativity, photography education
Been a little bit since I’ve photographed a new artist for the ‘Wall of Fame’ at sound Bites Grill in Sedona, Arizona.
Had the great pleasure of capturing fabulous guitarist Ottmar Liebert who sold out the house and ended up performing again tonight (Monday) because he was such a popular artist.
Here’s the art piece I assembled using my Photo-Synthesis technique using Adobe Photoshop and multiple images blended together.
Performing live at Sound Bites Ottmar Wall of Fame Photo Art image
Initial image was captured with the Lumix GH4 and the 42.5mm f1.2 Nocticron lens. 1/60 sec 3200 ISO I love the density range that the GH4 can hold even under the LED stage lights. Three additional images were pulled from my files and using Blend Modes, Layers, Fx and Adjustment Layers came up with the final art.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | commercial photography, fine art musician portrait, Lumix GX8, Lumix Lounge, musician photography, people photography, photography, photography creativity, photography education, photography gear
I always enjoy the challenge of photographing musicians live on stage and the additional challenge of turning the images into art for the ‘Wall of Fame’ at Sound Bites Grill. Last Saturday night it was Jeordie and the Mixology Project. Mix together a sweet voice with some fun, and moving, original music, fine musicians and you end up with a great evening’s entertainment.
Heeere’s Jeordie and the band.
Jeordie right there front and center. Doktor Mo on drums. Chad on lead guitar. Philip on flute. Tony on bass.
Each musician was selected from their photo and placed in the frame. Adobe Photoshop was used for the extractions. Drop Shadows, Inner Glow, Textures and Layer Bend Modes were incorporated in creating the art look for the WOF image. Autographs and the message were signed the night of the performance with black marker on white paper. These were scanned then imported and sized. The signature layers were inverted then the Blend Mode of those Layers was changes to Screen to allow the black to disappear and allow just the ‘white ink’ be left for the viewer.
All images were captured with the Lumix GX8 and the 35-100mm f2.8 Lumix Vario lens. (That’s the 70-200 35mm Full Frame equivalent)
A similar treatment in Photoshop of Jeordie by herself.
I also produce ‘straight’ images of the artists for marketing to the press in color with no artwork. I make the conversions to Black and White so there will be good solid contrast and definition. I’ll show you a couple of those tomorrow.
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | Lumix GX8, Lumix Lounge, musician photography, people photography, photography, photography gear, photography software
Went to Sound Bites Grill, my favorite restaurant, to see some of my favorite musicians play and was not disappointed on either case. Food was great and the entertainment of Miller, Martin and Ki was stellar as usual.
And also as usual, even though I wasn’t working I brought my Lumix GX8 with the 20mm f1.7 lens to the party to try to push some features. The table I was at had a very tough view of the stage as far as the camera goes. Deep shadows in the corner and Sunlit rocks out the window behind. I thought I’d try the HDR setting to see how it would do. There are menu choices of bracketing by one, two or three stops but there’s also an automatic setting. Now there’s an additional part of this challenge we have moving people. I made a number of exposures with a few distorting features until I realized I needed to bump up the ISO to get faster shutter times and watch for moments ‘between the movements’ of the performers.
Finished image. But, what I’d like you to do is compare the two images below to see the difference.
Straight out of Camera – 20mm @1.7 ISO 1600 Aperture Priority with auto setting for HDR capture
SOOC – 20mm @ f1.8 400 ISO Aperture Priority
Call for some more experimentation but I think the camera HDR setting handled a very difficult scene extremely well. A little additional processing in Adobe Camera Raw and Photoshop could tweak the HDR image to be somewhat better in taming the saturation and working tones a bit but I’m happy.
“Wait a minute Bob I thought the HDR feature saves images as jpegs. How are you going to process the file in ACR??”
If you have the image highlighted in Adobe Bridge using CMD R (mac) or Ctrl R (pc) will open the jpeg image in Adobe Camera Raw allowing you to use those controls. Very handy!
I also captured some 4K video that I haven’t had time to process. That will have to wait for another post…
Yours in Creative Photography, Bob
by successfulbob | black & white, commercial photography, Lumix GH4, Lumix GX8, Lumix Lounge, musician photography, people photography, photography gear
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 few from each of the performers…
First up was Grant Ferguson…
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.
