Portraits of a friend

Digital Matt · Sep 26, 2004

Disclaimer: I suck at portraits.

I took some shots of my good friend Mike. He's an amazing jazz pianist, so we went to our favorite jazz club and took advantage of the nice piano. The lighting was not great at all. It was pretty dark, with some window light coming in, although not directly at Mike, and small little spot lights on stage, but none directly overhead. I wasn't able to move things around to suit my needs. I just jumped in with my 50mm f/1.8 and tried to make use of the light. I don't have a speedlight, which would have helped, so these are shot at ISO 400 and above, even 1600, and wide open.

Comments and crits welcomed: )

I made a little montage out of 2 of the photos that he might use for a poster or something.

Thanks.

craig · Sep 26, 2004

Judging by the last two frames I would say that you your portraits are strong. Personally I have a hard time looking at the back of his head.

pilgrim · Sep 26, 2004

wow matt! I love the last thing you did up! Very nice work

JonMikal · Sep 26, 2004

Dude, awesome work! Very professional....and the mood......perfect!!!!

AIRIC · Sep 26, 2004

Cool, The poster has just the right touch.

Eric

mad_malteaser · Sep 27, 2004

I love the second picture that showed the movement of his hands on the keys. Really nice.

jadin · Sep 27, 2004

One thing I'm learning from photographing bands is use RAW if you can, and then adjust the tone compensation after the fact.

If you don't use / like / whatever RAW you can usually set this in camera (More contrast / less contrast normal / custom). I find using less contrast works great for stage lighting.

Digital Matt · Sep 27, 2004

Thanks guys. Jadin, I always shoot in RAW. Are you saying that the color tone is bad in these? There's only so much you can do when you've shot at ISO 1600. Any changes add noise.

I could lessen the contrast, but on my monitor it's not too much.

jadin · Sep 27, 2004

Didn't mean to imply there was something bad with them. From your description you gave me the impression you were looking for tips for that type of lighting. That and I wanted to share how drastic of a difference it can make.

Oh, one other extremely useful thing I've noticed for the shots I was going for at least, was to under-expose the shots (to get faster shutter) and then use exposure compensation to make up for it.

Digital Matt · Sep 27, 2004

The problem with this room was, there wasn't the kind of stage lighting I think you are thinking of. Those lights weren't on. All that was on were these tiny little tungsten overhead lights, which are there so musicians can read music. We didn't have the big colored spots on. It was just too dark.

Karalee · Sep 27, 2004

Im with craig, their strong, I love your last image, as Im sure your friend does too. The second to last one I love also, the lighting, the mood....

:thumbsup:

bshearer · Sep 27, 2004

I like the last image, for reasons mentioned above.

However, if you had no posted that your friend is a Jazz Pianist, I would not of known that. Nothing else in the images poked out and said Jazz to me, based on the lighting color, I deffinately would not of thought Jazz.

John E. · Sep 27, 2004

All I can say it that is one of the best posters I have seen. I am sure advertising companys pay big bucks for the photographer, support and wages for a poster like that.. I sure hope your friend realises that.

Digital Matt · Sep 28, 2004

Thanks Kara, and thank you bshearer. I'm curious as to how you think I could have portrayed "jazz" visually here. I wonder what your concept of jazz is. Just curious. What did you think of then when you saw it?

Thanks a lot Cruzin. You are too kind. I don't think my friend realizes the work I did. He didn't say anything when I showed these to him