You’re not seeing double. It’s just Meg and Dia, and while they might look sweet, they’re here to rock your ass. Opening up for Angels and Airwaves, the Frampton sisters brought their infectious hooks, pop sensibilities, and good genes to the Pageant and their adoring fans.
Despite their similar appearances, the sisters had distinctly different stage presences. When not singing back up, Meg was content to rock out on guitar midstage or back by the amps.
In contrast, Dia performed front and center, happy to soak in the small splashes of light that played over the stage as she wheeled around, mic in hand.
Monster:
Roses:
Photographer’s Notes:
This was a very challenging set to photograph. After seeing the lighting for the opening acts, I wasn’t sure what to expect, but Meg & Dia’s set definitely pushed the D3 and my experience to its limits.
One of the biggest challenges of the night was Dia’s constant movement on stage, be it walking, dancing, spinning, or maybe even skipping. This girl is going to challenge your AF skills, trust me.
Lighting:
I’m not gonna lie, it was crazy dark. Lots of backlighting for this set with very weak frontlighting, if any. Deep washes of red and blue were sparsely interjected by flashes of pale white light. Tricky, to say the least.
Still, I thought the lighting for this set did produce one or two really interesting shots as a result of this lighting. For me, the most compelling shots came with the little bursts of white light, so I focused on timing my shots to those as much as possible.
Lenses & Gear:
I used the Nikon D3 for this show and a host of several lenses, including the Nikon 50mm f/1.4, Nikon 85mm f/1.4, and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8.
The light levels necessitated the primes, otherwise the midrange zoom would have been fine for this set in terms of range.
Exposure & Metering:
I shot between ISO 6400 and 12800 for this set. Apertures and shutter speeds were all over the place, but I will say that this was a difficult set to nail. Good luck!
End Notes:
Dear Meg & Dia,
Please come back as a headlining band! That would be swell.
Thanks,
Todd.
7 Comments Add your own
1. Andi | April 10th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
#1 this time, although it is kind of red wash lighting, the little touch of purple gives this pic a very cute look
2. Todd | April 10th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
Hey Andi, thanks as always for your feedback. The lighting mix for this performance was kind of strange, especially during the bursts of white light, as there were often a lot of different hues that came through in the shots.
3. Andi | April 10th, 2008 at 5:21 pm
Yeah, I saw something similar two weeks ago at the Ragnarök Festival, especially when the big headliners took the stage. But thankfully I was able to capture at least one or two shots at the end of the 2 song limited shooting time, which offered a bit of clean lighting. Damn, sometimes I wish I could just put up some gelled strobes and some Pocket Wizards up in those roofs, just like those nerdy sport-photogs
4. Todd | April 10th, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Ha, there is some guy on Flickr who does exactly that. He joined in on a discussion of flash a while back.
Basically, his technique was to get nestle the speedlights in among the existing lights of the venue, so that the directionality and such was identical. Pretty smart.
I’ve seen good results with this technique – I think it would work great in a medium to small-sized venue, where the lighting rigs are more accessible and one could probably get in with the owners.
5. Andi | April 11th, 2008 at 1:10 am
Yeah, I also did something similar a few times. The basic thing I did was to use the low ceilings of the small venues and bounce flash of them - mostly gelled with a CTO - to be mixed with the existing light. For example, I did set up two flashes, one SB600 and one SB25 each radio triggered, at both sides of the stage on normal camera tripods(well actually you could not call it stage, it was at the same height level as the crowd), maybe 5 to 6 meters away. Since I did set both up with a different flash output, I still got some dynamic shadows in the faces and could go to 1/30s at f2.8 and ISO1600 (with the flash freezing the action). Turned out quite good, without the flash there would have been absolutely no visible light.
6. Todd | April 11th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
Sounds cool, Andi. Can you send me a link to the shots? I’d like to see them.
7. Andi | April 11th, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Sure:
http://www.metalfoto.de/wp-content/photos/Extreme%20Live%20Assault
speak up
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