OK, so a few things to talk about today in addition to a veritable orgy of visual amazement (modesty is a strong point of mine). Firstly, I have a new signature/watermark for my photos. The old "mb" in the corner was way too easy to crop out, which is something my friends have been known to do, and really it could have meant anything so I've bitten the bullet and plastered them with the full name. It's actually great to see, particularly when people set one of my shots as their fb profile pic and there it is!
My name! I used grey because I think it's the perfect neutral- it shows up on light and dark backgrounds, as well as being a subtle shade, so as not to distract too much from the shot. It gives the appearance of being somewhat transparent when it's really opaque.
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| Minus House |
Secondly, we had a substitute for the last class of the short course I was doing- Camera Skills at Sydney Community College. Long story short, I showed some of my gig shots and he suggested that I change my white balance to tungsten (incandescent for us Nikon users) instead of leaving it on auto.
Basically, the camera will do a great job compensating for the light source on auto, unless it doesn't know what the source is. In the case of stage lighting, where the colours are constantly changing and you never really see the light as it is, the camera doesn't know how to compensate. By changing the white balance to tungsten, which is what stage lights are, the tone can be greatly affected.
Saturday night was my first chance to try it and I really noticed the difference. I'm sure those who have seen my work will see that it's somehow better but may not be able to pinpoint exactly where the improvement is. Mostly, it's in the skin tones. There's less tonal distortion there. Anyway I'm really happy with the result and the lights at this gig were AH-mazing so the shots turned out really well, IMO.
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| Ashes |
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| Marlow |
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| Fixation |
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| The Crowd. Ft. Ramshackle |
I went back to the Sando on Wednesday night for Ramshackle's set in the Inner West Band Comp semi final. For reasons I don't understand, the light guy appeared to be having a night off, so the lights were completely unchanghing through their set. I got a few decent shots but as a whole I felt dissapointed. I can't shoot well if I'm not inspired, that's just the way it is. I'll upload the ones I'm happy with next week.
You'll also notice I introduced a second page to the blog. Because this is the closest I have to my own website right now, people need to be able to contact me and know a few things about my charges. I plan to start advertising in Drummedia soon so hopefully I'll get some paying gigs from that.
Fingers crossed.
