tuesday night

May 14, 2008

a club in Manhattan on Tuesday, past midnight

Canon 1D mk3, Canon 50mm f1.2 // 1/25th @ f1.2 @ 32oo ISO

 

{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Linda Wang May 14, 2008 at 2:31 pm

Neil,

It’s interesting to see some of your work outside of wedding photography. These have a mysterious feel to them … I am intruigued. Great work, as always!

Linda

2 Neil May 15, 2008 at 6:46 pm

Hi there Linda …

Thank you! Yes, it was quite a refreshing experience to be able to try something different without fear of not succeeding to make a client happy.

I am so busy with weddings and such, that I don’t often get to take photographs simply for myself and maybe do something that just pushes my own creative abilities again .. and of course, in the process perhaps stimulating my approach to wedding photography with something new.

Neil vN

3 Sha Sha May 15, 2008 at 7:33 pm

Still trying to figure out what that first guy is doing…

4 Stephen May 16, 2008 at 10:32 am

Neil,
Interesting nightclub shots. How much lighting was at this nightclub? Did you use any flash? I see some graininess in the photos so you probably had the ISO up on this.

5 Neil May 17, 2008 at 10:21 am

Hi there Stephen …

The info is supplied there in light grey text under the images.

Neil.

6 Nimrod May 21, 2008 at 7:40 am

I love the grain on these pictures! At first, I thought this was b/w film! Was this one of the few opportunities where you did not use flash?

7 Gary orr July 16, 2008 at 7:03 pm

Hi

I am always impressed by your images and often pop by for some inspiration.

Wow did you handhold these at 1/25th thats great breathing control. You could have been a top sniper in the military :)

These are the kind of images I would love to take more of, but I usually feel to voyeuristic to get my camera out in these situations. I have done before but my subjects usually want to know why I’m so interested in photographing them and their alcohol induced paranoia dampens my desire somewhat. Did you know your subjects?

Love the way the guy in the first shot sorting his collar looks like he’s holding himself up.

And the way the dude in the 2nd looks like he is purposely peeking round the balloon.

And I presume thats the guys hand that is blurred in the last shot? his fingers look like he has sabre tooth tusks.

Fantastic stuff

The balloons and out of focus bar lights add immense atmosphere.

Thats it I’m taking my camera the next time I’m off to a trendy nite spot.

8 Neil July 17, 2008 at 2:12 am

Hi there Gary ..

Thank you for the lovely compliments.

In getting these fairly sharp images, I resorted to firing off the 1D mk3 camera at the highest frame rate it could get. (It won’t hit 10 frames a second at such a slow shutter speed.) In this way I would fire off bursts of sequences of images, and then in post-production, select the sharpest images.

This way I helped eliminate having all my images soft at such a slow shutter speed.

As for blending in here, I didn’t know any of my subjects there. But I do think it helped that I was hanging around with a group of friends there. This I believe did reduce the ‘creep’ factor that a lone skulking photographer would have. I also didn’t hide the fact that I was taking photographs, but neither was I blatant about it. I tried to be as matter-of-fact about it.

Of all the images I shot that evening, I really liked these three for having a certain enigmatic quality to them, especially since they don’t quite look like ‘party’ photos. (And yes, that is the way that guy’s hand blurred in front of him as he moved.)

thanks again

Neil vN

9 Brian Daly August 14, 2008 at 6:16 am

Nice departure Neil from your usual style.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to see them tagged Leica M2, Noctilux, Fuji Neopan 1600, DD-X 8mins :)

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