We drove allllll the way to Oceanside to see my good friends, the Tractormen, play at the Royal Dive. The show photos will be up later, but I wanted to mention that they are playing my big big photo/music show on Friday, March 5th. I'll have a flyer later this week. At the show I'll be displaying both live and group shots of four bands. I thought I'd post my second favorite of their group shots here- the best one will have to wait until you see it in person.



The auto repair shop made a fitting background for the band. I think that I acheived a good, natural looking balance between the ambient light and the flash. The parking lot is big, so I was able to position my flash pops right where I wanted them. I wasn't able to achieve such a smooth lighting gradation with the band I shot last night. Anyway, the Royal Dive's sign is blown out, but it's just a part of the background, so it's ok.

I positioned everyone so that they would block the security lights, which gave Mike a nice shadow coming towards the camera on the left. By only popping the flash from the sides and behind, I achieved the separation between background and the band members from each other. Textures will lose detail in anything when shot with mainly front lighting, and I wanted the ripples in the clothes to show up. By not illuminating the front, I kept the faces in heavy shadow, which helps to lessen the appearance of soft focus due to motion blur. These are 20 second exposures after all, it's tough to stay perfectly still for that long.

It wasn't all perfect, though. Next time, I'll try to remember that I should remove my UV filter BEFORE the shoot starts. I didn't realize the filter was on the lens until I had already started, and by that time the temperature of the threads dropped, which cemented the filter on there. These types of shots don't look as good with a filter since every speck of dust will show up in the bright backlighting and flash pops. I did some spot removal of flare, but in the end it's still not quite as crisp as I'd like.

All in all, I'm happy with this set and I'm glad that I'm able to shoot this for some of my best friends.