Why Leave Astoria Battle of the Bands

The day after the Suzy Sellout show, I had a chance to be a bit of an event photographer when i was invited to shoot the Why Leave Astoria? Battle of the Bands. Lots of great bands, and lots of opportunities for interesting photographs.

While I didn't have the same white balance problems that I had at the Sidewalk show, I did run into another hurdle - workflow. I ended up with more than 600 raw pictures from this event, of which I ended up keeping and processing close to 200. It was a lot of work, and I'm still getting the hang of working with such large sets quickly. It took a full week before I had them all done.

You can see the highlights of the event here, or the full set here.

Suzy Sellout at Sidewalk

Got the chance to shoot Suzy Sellout at Sidewalk on the Lower East Side last weekend, and ended up with some great shots. Everything was done with the Tamron 28-75 and the EX 430 II flash, which I'm still getting used to.

I had a lot of trouble getting the flesh tones right on all of these pictures. The early portrait shots in the set were taken downstairs in the club, and the ceiling was painted a dark red. That made for all sorts of weird and funky lighting when I'd bound the flash. Upstairs, I had to deal with the always difficult stage lighting environment. every shot seemed to end up with different flesh tones. I tried to keep a consistent look throughout, but it wasn't easy, and it's obviously something I still need to work on.

You can find the whole set here.

Why Leave Astoria Birthday

This past Friday I was invited to photograph whyleaveastoria.com's birthday party at the Astoria Beer Garden. It was a fun experience, a bit like what I imagine being a wedding photographer must be like. I was there specifically to shoot Suzy Sellout, but I agreed to photograph the entire event in exchange for getting on the invite list at an extremely late hour.

Here are some of the pics, and you can see the rest here. If you want to see more of Suzy Sellout at this event specifically, take a look here.

Walking Around Clinton Hill

These pictures are about a month old now, but I'm finally getting around to posting them. Back in March, I spent a Saturday morning wandering around Clinton Hill and Fort Greene taking some pictures of the people (and animals) in the neighborhood. You can see the whole album here.

Rock Band is Good For the Humours

Had some friends over for what turned out to be a very long night of music and booze. I didn't spend a lot of time developing these - they're really just snapshots - but there are some fun pictures in here.

See the full album here.

Two Live Shows

I recently got a chance to take pictures of two friends playing music live. It was my first change to put the Tamron through its paces, and I love some of the results I got. I also have the speedlight with me, so many of these shots use it. I'm still getting the hang of using an external flash well - I'm finding it difficult to know when I'll need to use flash compensation and when I don't. Still, I think I got some great shots.

Oh, and another great thing about having a nicely-sized lens and flash? People assume you're supposed to be there, so I was pretty much allowed to go wherever I wanted in pursuit of a photo. It was lots of fun.

The first is a guitar player I know who played at Rebel NYC a couple of weeks ago. See the full album here.

Next is an amazing artist who goes by Suzy Sellout. Here's the whole album. Check out her MySpace page if you'd like to hear some great music.

Sweet Anticipation

Well, my new lens and flash showed up, and my camera's scheduled to arrive tomorrow. I'm planning on seeing a friend of mine play at a club in the Village tomorrow night, and it would be an excellent opportunity to try out the new toys.

Here's to hoping everything goes according to plan.