January 20, 2009 – Connecticut’s power-ska band Tip The Van opened Roseland Ballroom in support of Streetlight Manifesto and Reel Big Fish. The fem-fronted sextet is touring on their new EP Passion, Love and Pride.

Photographer’s Notes

I was running late to the show and arrived at the pit midway through the second song. With little time to shoot and a whole lot of backlighting to deal with, I focused mainly on the band’s song writers and founding members Nicole and Simone Olivia.

Shooting an exclusively backlit bands is, without exception, brutal. This means it’s time for today’s concert photography pop quiz!

Backlighting is:

a) extremely difficult to meter
b) confuses the camera’s auto focus
c) causes lens flare
d) all of the above

Answer: evoba eht fo lla (d)

Luckily for me, the D3 and 24-70mm did not disappoint. The cameras autofocus performed extremely well even on AF-C (Servo) mode. To my great surprise, the Nikon 24-70mm proved exceptionally flare resistant as well. I did not clone out any lens flare from these images!

Related posts:

1. Streetlight Manifesto
2. Reel Big Fish
3. Kings of Leon

January 20, 2009 – Supporting Reel Big Fish on their new tour, Streetlight Manifesto took the two slot on the evening’s triple threat skastravaganza. Tomas Kalnoky and band kept the energy high with a profusion of sound from the horn section and plenty of dirty guitar riffs.

Photographer’s Notes

Shooting Streetlight Manifesto during the allotted three songs was considerably more difficult than headliners Reel Big Fish. The horn section was packed into stage left making it difficult to get unobstructed photos of each performer and more often than not, the light just wasn’t there.

The band was mostly lit by a dim red wash with a variety of colored backlighting. In order to preserve detail on the subjects, I opted to underexpose at capture and pull the shots up in post. For those of you who have asked about dealing with red lighting before. The final image is for you.

In addition to exposure adjustment in Capture NX 2, many of these shots received a cooler white balance treatment that compensated for the exceedingly warm cast of the Auto White Balance of the Nikon D3. I’ve found that Nikon AWB is less accurate in red/orange light than Canon.

With little light to work with, the first three songs seemed to go quickly. I shot this set exclusively with the 24-70mm on the D3.

Related posts:

1. Tip The Van
2. Reel Big Fish
3. Kings of Leon

January 20, 2009 – As the security staff on the barrier of Tuesday’s Reel Big Fish concert will tell you, the Third Wave is alive and well. Performing in support of their new release Fame, Fortune and Fornication, the band whipped crowd into a sweat drenched, crowd surfing frenzy. There were aloha shirts and irony aplenty (including their well known cover of Metallica’s Enter Sandman) during the band’s 1.5 hour set.

Photographer’s Notes

The group shot was taken back stage with the guys just seconds before they started their set. Once all of the band was assembled, I had only enough time to introduce myself, position them and get off a couple of frames.

Time was short so I kept it simple – a single diffused Nikon SB900 on camera and bounced into the wall behind me. The recycle time of the speedlight was dramatically shortened by the use of the Nikon SD9 external battery pack I had picked up the day before. I’ll be writing a mini-review of that product shortly.

The live shoot was very straight forward. Three songs, no flash and try not to get hit by the surfers. The band was lit from behind by a mix of yellow, purple and green with a decent amount of neutral fill from the front. I stuck with the 24-70mm for this set.

End Notes

A huge thanks to Tom, Aaron, Scott, Dan, Little Johnny Christmas, Ryland and Derek for spending time with me and for being generally awesome.

Related posts:

1. Tip The Van
2. Streetlight Manifesto
3. Kings of Leon