{"id":9303,"date":"2011-10-17T04:13:21","date_gmt":"2011-10-17T08:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/?p=9303"},"modified":"2021-02-23T07:29:36","modified_gmt":"2021-02-23T11:29:36","slug":"shooting-promotional-photos-for-a-band","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/shooting-promotional-photos-for-a-band\/","title":{"rendered":"shooting promotional photos for a band"},"content":{"rendered":"

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camera settings: 1\/50 @ f8 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 35mm; \u00a0available light<\/span><\/p>\n

shooting promotional photos for a band<\/h1>\n

Anyone who knows me well is probably very aware that my first true love is music. I live my life to a music soundtrack. There’s always music playing. Not the radio, but music of my own choice. I love music … however, my sense of rhythm isn’t all that it should’ve been for me to be a natural muso. But still, I love music. All of which meant that one few non-negotiable rules for my daughter was that she had to take music lessons. So she plays bari sax in the high-school’s Jazz band, and she’s also been taking guitar lessons for a few years now with a guitar teacher, Gerard.<\/p>\n

All of which brings us to this photo session – promotional photos of Gerard’s band. That is Gerard (right) and Ed (center : piano) and Joe (left : guitar).\u00a0I met up this weekend with them in Hoboken. Perfect for the urban feel to the photos. Hanging out with them for a few hours coming up with ideas and places for photos, was great fun. The camaraderie between them will be familiar to anyone who has ever played in a band. You connect. That all too short time I played tenor sax in a rock band back in South Africa circa 1999, just before we emigrated to the USA, was one of the best times in my life. But I digress. It was cool to hang out with these three musicians for the afternoon.<\/p>\n

Here are some of my favorite images, with some details \u00a0…<\/p>\n

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I used off-camera flash for half the time that we shot, and for the rest I used the available light. It all depended on whether off-camera flash was needed or was practical for a specific setup.<\/p>\n

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camera settings:\u00a01\/200 @ f5 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 28mm
\nTTL off-camera flash\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Here is the pull-back shot of the image above, showing how I placed the light, and the setup. It was very basic and portable. A light-stand, a shoot-through umbrella, and the PocketWizard TT5 units.\u00a0All images shown here were shot with the\u00a0Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S<\/a>\u00a0(B&H)<\/p>\n

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And yes, the light-stand did blow over twice and the umbrella is crushed … but it is cheaper than hiring an assistant for the shoot. That’s one way of looking at it.<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The next three images were all shot with just the available light. As always, the idea with using the available light is that observed and people posed accordingly<\/a> so that the light is flattering, and not just a random thing.<\/p>\n

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camera settings: 1\/160 @ f5.6 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 28mm; \u00a0available light<\/span><\/p>\n

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camera settings: 1\/60 @ f5.6 @ 1000 ISO … lens zoomed to 40mm; \u00a0available light<\/span><\/p>\n

With these two B&W images above, as well as the image at the very top, I used a textured layer in Photoshop to help bump up the contrast and give a certain mood to the images.<\/p>\n

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camera settings: 1\/125 @ f4.5 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 35mm; \u00a0available light<\/span><\/p>\n

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camera settings: 1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 50mm
\nTTL off-camera flash as described above\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

camera settings: 1\/250 @ f5.6 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 35mm
\nTTL off-camera flash as described above\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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camera settings: 1\/250 @ f8 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 45mm<\/span>
\nTTL off-camera flash as described above \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

equipment used during this photo session:<\/p>\n

Nikon D3;\u00a0Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S<\/a>\u00a0(B&H)
\nNikon SB-910 Speedlight<\/a>\u00a0controlled by\u00a0PocketWizard FlexTT5 &\u00a0AC3 Controller<\/a>
\nor alternately, the\u00a0Canon 600EX-RT Speedlite<\/a>\u00a0controlled by\u00a0Canon ST-E3 Transmitter<\/a>
\nManfrotto 1004BAC light-stand<\/a>\u00a0(B&H)
\numbrella bracket<\/a>\u00a0(B&H); \u00a045″ white shoot-through umbrella<\/a>\u00a0(B&H)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

camera settings: 1\/50 @ f8 @ 800 ISO … lens zoomed to 35mm; \u00a0available light shooting promotional photos for a band Anyone who knows me well is probably very aware that my first true love is music. I live my life to a music soundtrack. There’s always music playing. Not the radio, but music of Read more inside…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[140,15,33,41,1],"tags":[886,871,67,278],"yst_prominent_words":[9461,13536,13533,1134,13532,13531,9463,9462,1397,1632,10120,9003,13535,13539,13534,13537,5342,10121,13540,13538],"class_list":{"0":"post-9303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-available-light-photography","8":"category-flash-photography","9":"category-portraits","10":"category-style","11":"category-uncategorized","12":"tag-available-light-photography","13":"tag-flash-photography","14":"tag-off-camera-lighting-for-portraits","15":"tag-promotional-photos-musicians","16":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9303"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9303"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50330,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9303\/revisions\/50330"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9303"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/neilvn.com\/tangents\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=9303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}