Taking & Processing Photographs

www.musicphotographers.co.uk is a collective of six of the leading music photographers in London UK.

We welcome any questions from any level of photographer about how to become a music photographer, to workflow, lighting techniques or any trade secrets.

Just post responses on this forum so everyone can share the information.

Walters created a great online community and we would love to be a part of it.

Cheers,

Andy

Nikon has posted a statement regarding their Windows 7 support for Nikon software. I noted in the statement that they are testing "compatibility" with Nikon Scan. I wonder if they ever plan to update Nikon Scan or the drivers for it. I'm using a Mac with OS X 10.6.1 Snow Leopard. I haven't tried to scan since the upgrade but I'm hoping I'm not hosed.

So the other day I was shooting Fall Out Boy for the Pepsi Super Bowl Smash, I did not have a long lens and this was a soundboard shoot. My buddy let me borrow his 300 that he had, and it had a filter on it, I am anti-filter because of ghost flares and other reasons, but this time since it was not my lens and he was next to me I left it on because he prob is the percentage of people that use it for protection and would probably yell at me if he saw me trying to take it off.

If you saw the following in one of your shots, do you photoshop it out to save someone a bit of embarrassment?
Or does 'fixing it' cross the line of photojournalistic style?

(personally I edit. Just curious what others do.)

Hey, my version of Photoshop CS2 has suddenly stopped letting me work with type. What I mean is, I can add the type, but I no longer get the handles to resize or stretch it directly.

This has happened once before and I can't for the life of me remember how to turn this function back on.

I'm on Windows, XP Media Pro for my OS.

Man, I hate senior moments.

Can anyone nudge me in the right direction? Do it here so the answer might benefit someone else down the road. (Maybe even me, heh!)

I've been thinking about how to combat the use of red lights. Most major artists don't have this problem. The performers are usually lit with white lights, and colored lights are used as fill behind on the background. That provides us with very pleasing results. Smaller artists are the ones that often plague us with too much red. For artists who I can contact directly, I have started to send them JPG images showing them the effects of red lighting. Then I ask if they can work with their lighting techs to use white and/or yellow to spot the performers and colors only for background.

I'm trying this whole no-flash thing.. got my f/1.8 which is nice... but I have a Nikon. Oh, I love my Nikon, but we all know the bane of Nikon, that being ISO & Noise. I shot on tuesday at ISO 800 and there was noise. It kind of worked in some photos, but not in others. Here is an example of one I kind of like (yes, I know it's not very crisp):

What's your technique (or advice/conjecture) when there is one dominant very strong channel - say blue - which blows the histogram to smithereens, with very little (or nominal) amount of the other other two channels (red & green)? Have had a couple of gigs lately which presented this conundrum at times and I'm still not sure of the best approach for optimum results.

I have a huge shoot this weekend. I actually get to shoot Jimmy Eat World (which is a really big thing for me, personally) at Bender Arena on Saturday. I'm REALLY nervous about my shots turning out. First, I've never shot there so I don't know what to expect. Also, up until recently I've been shooting with a kit lens /w flash. It's been pretty cool, but I am 99% sure I can't use flash at this show (or some of the ones coming up) so I bought a 50mm f/1.8. I've only shot one show with it and it was horrible. Not really my fault.. there was no photo pit, and awful, awful lighting..

I've recently started taking along the 11-18mm to try & capture a good looking wide shot of the stage, though they do not really have any commercial appeal, I personally like the look of them.....but they are actually quite hard to capture, unless you have a massive stage setup like Kiss

Post your attempts, links from those who you think have nailed it or even your reasons why you hate them....

Here is one of mine from Korn on Sunday night

Here is how I took an image I knew was killer and got it there.

First off, the artist is Annie Rose, a blues singer from the Green Bay area who has been cast to play Janis Joplin in a movie that will start shooting sometime this summer. I knew I had to get great images of her, but was hamstrung by a couple of factors:

1. Despite four lights the band brought, there was NO WAY I was going to be able to shoot existing light with ANY of my lenses.

2. The club I was shooting in had a most distracting background.

Anyone know of a GOOD image management program that can track images NOT on a hard drive (stored on CD/DVD)?

Windows based, of course.

Thanks.

Jamie Taylor
Photojournalist Extraordinaire &
Grumpy Old Man in Training
"How about you come back to my place and I'll show you my man-size manicotti?" -- Grampa Gustafson, "Grumpier Old Men"
http://www.myspace.com/tailwindimaging

Hello!

Hi
Do you usually use Lens Hood when you shoot live concerts?
Thanks :)

What's the verdict?

I've been using Lightroom mostly but now that I am on my own to license software I'm thinking of switching over to Aperture. It is cheaper and the latest version is more intuitive and user friendly than previous versions.

So far I am impressed with what Aperture 2 does and I like the fact that it integrates nicely with other apple software I use every day.

What is anyone else's verdict?