redfishingboat

In my quest to develop a craft, I went to the Bootleg Theater in Silver Lake on Friday to photograph the band LoveLikeFire. It was yet another venue I’d never been to and didn’t know what to expect for lights. What I saw when I got there were just some dim overhead bulbs. So indie rock!

This time I brought the 50mm f/1.4 and the 70-200 f/2.8L with some image-stabilizing action. I knew no matter what happened with the “fitty”, I’d get something with the “moneymaker.”

Also on the bill was a local band called All Wrong and the Plans Change, featuring a real stunner on lead vox. The color on those shots was so bad, but they converted to monochrome fairly nicely. Cheat! (See below)

When LoveLikeFire came on, I really tried to pay attention to technical detail and get some sharp shots, which I did. The above shot was with the 50mm at f/1.8 and 1/160 sec. Whats interesting is that most of my sharp shots came after I switched back linking auto-focus to the shutter instead of the back button. (You can read about the benefits of back-button focus here.) The literature even suggests back-button focus is better for moving subjects. So, my success in switching to shutter seems counter intuitive to me, but perhaps using the shutter button brings the moment of shutter-release closer chronologically to the moment of focus, by a few milliseconds at least. I much prefer back-button focus, but it might actually be too slow for subjects moving front-to-back? I will keep experimenting.

I was getting sharp shots, but nothing very dramatic. The dull overhead bulbs added nothing. A week after complaining about the static red and blue lights at Spaceland, I would have killed for something so interesting.

Then with two songs left in LoveLikeFire’s set, I broke out a speedlight, put it on a bracket and slapped a Lumiquest Softbox III on it. I know it looked ridiculous, but I wanted to see what sort of results it brought. I had some trouble getting the flash to fire. Maybe the TTL cord I used (off-brand) is dodgy? When it did fire, the light was enough to illuminate the subject, but again pretty boring for a rock concert.

This shot is with the softboxed speedlight. The bracket pushed the strobe away from the axis enough that there is nice definition on her chin. But there’s not a lot of drama.

I’ll continue to practice. Having an accomplice to stand off to the side with a gelled flash to light the background would be rad, but likely impractical. Asking the band if I could place a light in back might work. Would I ever get the balls to do that?

Oh yeah, and here the gorgeous singer from All Wrong: