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Home » Forums » PhotoShare » Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

Dir En Grey @ Tavastia

published by Kalle Björklid on Wed, 11/07/2007 - 1:58pm

Well, this was a weird gig for me. I suggested the gig (and a piece about J-Rock) to the local newspaper, and they accepted it. The guy who was supposed to write the text called me about three hours before the gig and told me he was sick. So I actually wrote the piece myself, which was quite a start for my writing career, as the news paper is read by over 180000 people, and I had never witten anything like that.

What I hated is that my photography suffered because of the writing effort. It might've been a different story if I had had time to prepare, but now I had to basically improvise the interviews (I interviewed some of the fans in the queue who had spent the night in sub-zero temperatures (celcius), in sleeping bags on the street.

The lighting was as bad as it gets quality-wise, I guess you can see it from the pics.

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Comment & Critique - Live, Backstage, Promo, etc

Submitted by DwightMcCann on Wed, 11/07/2007 - 2:21pm.

So, why is the first image so noise free and the other two very noisy? The first is ISO 1600 but the other two are missing their EXIF. Is the noise in the last two "artistic"? In any case, I am really entranced by that first image ... you sat on the floor in front of the stage and had the girls reaching over you using the fisheye? Very, very nice image ... could never manage it at the casino, sigh.

Dwight McCann

Submitted by Kalle Björklid on Wed, 11/07/2007 - 3:32pm.

DwightMcCann wrote:
So, why is the first image so noise free and the other two very noisy? The first is ISO 1600 but the other two are missing their EXIF. Is the noise in the last two "artistic"?

In most of my pictures, noise pops up because of the post processing I do, for instance, adding a lot of contrast. that's the case in these images also. I remember pushing the second image a stop or so. Not sure how the third was, but I've probably at least added lots of contrast there also.

About this whole "artistic noise" issue: I personally don't think it always fits, but for instance for rock/metal played in small-to-medium sized clubs it often doesn't hurt. Where it doesn't fit is when the subject is a young woman, for instance (but then, strong contrast won't fit either...)

I guess one thing why the small club pics are often noisy is because there is often more contrast because the lights are nearer to the performers. Because there is more contrast, one has to "underexpose" to make sure the color channels don't get clipped. Then you have to compensate using curves, which produces noise. Noise just... happens :).

Now I have the film Canon (EOS-1n) and ISO3200 BW film, wait 'till I post some pics taken with that comibination, I guess then we'll have this noise-discussion on a whole different level ;)

DwightMcCann wrote:
In any case, I am really entranced by that first image ... you sat on the floor in front of the stage and had the girls reaching over you using the fisheye? Very, very nice image ... could never manage it at the casino, sigh.

Thanks! you guessed right... I guess venues and of course perfoermers (you have very different performers than I do) play a large role in one's shooting (and post processing) style, I basically would think that if I were to shoot at your casino, my images would resemble yours more than my own small-club-pics!

http://www.bjorklid.net/
http://www.huumakuva.net/

Submitted by DwightMcCann on Wed, 11/07/2007 - 3:53pm.

Kalle, yes, I think the fact that shoot almost exclusively any more under superb conditions with big names can be a drawback to style. Tonight I will shoot the annual Native American Heritage Celebration at the casino which will be very different with subdued lighting, but tomorrow night it will be back to Diana Ross, great lighting and a severe song limit! I think it is the constant bright lighting that is driving me to explore portrait/glamor shooting on the side. :-)

Dwight McCann