Back in August, I shot the Ana Popovic concert at the Mexicali Live in Teaneck, NJ. While I posted a couple of random images from it on this site, I never did a full writeup. It was the show that was practically doomed from the start: I thought I had lost my memory cards on the way there, I ran out of space on my hard drives and was waiting for an Amazon shipment for more, and then a major hurricane hit. It was a messy time.
Here now, at last, are the pictures from that night with various musings from what I remember and what I had started writing at the time.
85mm, f/1.8, ISO 2500, 1/160"
The artist in question was Ana Popovic. She had an opening act I missed for reasons we’ll get into a little later.
Some random thoughts:
Mic stands are evil. All venues should now begin hanging their mics from the ceiling to prevent those eye sores from getting in the way of my pictures. Thanks!
28mm, f/2, ISO 3200, 1/100"
This is the first concert I’ve ever shied away from standing right in front of the artist for fear of getting an accidental upskirt shot.
Haven’t shown one of these in a while. Here’s they the thing: Play it in high def and blow it up to full screen, then but a bigger monitor and enjoy it again and again. I love any clip with the Washington Monument in it, but the one at the minute mark is awesome:
This was a tough act to photograph, taking place in very low light, with a black and silver costume in mostly blue lighting. He rarely faced my direction, so I have lots of shots from behind, which aren’t very exciting. And the balls are moving so fast that it’s tough to freeze them in such low light.
In the end, the closest I could come to a clear picture needed to be in black and white to show as much detail as possible. Even at that, I have this picture taken at the widest open aperture I could use, at the widest focal length of my Tamron 28-75mm lens, and as far as I feel comfortable pushing the ISO, at 4000. That got me to 1/320th of a second, which was enough to freeze the balls in mid-air.
I’m so happy with how well these pictures came out. There was something about the lighting that’s just perfect — dark blacks, bright blues and purples, good spotlighting, and the right manual settings on the camera. Pardon me while I pat myself on the back.
I like the puff of dust from the rosin on their hands visible here as they join up...
At the end of the concert, Rick Springfield took a drink. I knew what was coming next. He was SO going to spit that water out. I just didn’t know in which direction, or how far it would go, or exactly when he’d choose to do it. And that’s why the picture I took at that moment was ultimately unsatisfying, though I like the thought of it.
Haviland opened for Rick Springfield last month at the Bergen Performing Arts Center. I didn’t walk away with too many great pictures from that set, but I thought this one turned out nice. It’s been added to my portfolio, which I updated tonight, as well. Check that out if you have a spare minute.
Last week, we had a bit of a freak snowstorm here in the northeast U.S. on the weekend before Halloween. The craziest stuff I saw I didn’t get to photograph (downed trees and power lines across empty roads), but here’s how it looked as the sun came up the morning after.
28mm, f/13, ISO 800, 1/250th second and a lot of Lightroom to make it look right
This from early in the shoot. I wish I had cranked the ISO up to 3500 or 4000 so I could have gotten the shutter speed to 1/250th or so. There was a lot of blur in a lot of the shots from the quick moves of the acrobats. In some cases, that worked, but it still annoyed me.
Grandma is retiring after this season. After many long years in the circus, it’s time for Grandma to hang up the clown shoes. So I made sure to get a few decent shots of her. Er, ‘him,’ really. . .
The last shot is one of my favorites of the day, period.
