Performing at Pageant in a benefit concert for Haiti earthquake victims, the Upright Animals delivered an intense 40-minute set that was a lot of fun to photograph. The Upright Animals are a band I've worked with a good deal in the past and it was a pleasure to photograph them again.
Knowing that lighting treatments would likely be pretty sparse, I came packing a few speedlights to spice things up.
Photographer's Notes:
The last time the Upright Animals performed at the Pageant, we rocked speedlights and the band loved the effect, so we used a similar setup for this show as well. One big difference between this show and the last was the abundant use of haze at the previous performance, so the look of the flash did vary quite a bit between the two gigs.
For the most part, I shot this set with the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 on the D700 and the 24-70mmm f/2.8 on the D3. I switched out to the beastly 14-24mm f/2.8 for just a few up-close-and-personal drummer shots. Due to monitors pushed up to the edge of the stage and the band's own dynamic, I found that 24mm was plenty wide on the midrange for stagefront photography.
With flash, exposure for this performance hovered around ISO 3200 at 1/80 and f/2.8. Overall the stage lighting was quite low, so even getting a bit of the incandescent light into the exposure required the benefits of ISO 3200 and a relatively slow shutter speed.
End Notes:
Big thanks to the Upright Animals for hooking everything up. We'll be shooting promos of these guys soon, so look out for that.
