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Shoot: Greenroom Pre Show

And this is a real green room. This light was here. We actually I'm not gonna lie. We brought that light in from another room. It's not even turned on yet. It's not a lot of light. This is we've got wait a second. I thought seattle was energy efficient. Wire there's still sixteen. What bulbs in the ceiling that aren't cfl's? They haven't done that yet. Anyway, we're dealing with it. This is a yellow tinge, you know, I have to figure out what am I going to do? I got backstage. What are things that I'm thinking about when I'm sitting here? Well, the band is usually just gonna hang out that's before the show, they're doing what they're doing, and I just interact. I put myself in their situation, we have a conversation, I like to interact and get them to know that I'm a real human being and being that we work together earlier today, they get it, they see it, and now, technically, we're going call this before the show where maybe hanging out after most of the hanging out happens before and ...

then after the show, you look and it's all like we're ready to go load out let's, get on the bus and go to the next venue right? You know, when you get on your bus the jet, the private jet so things to keep in mind back here I'm just going to walk around the room as I think we have these bottles of water on the table, it could be distracting sometimes have a bottle of jack that can work to your benefit because alcohol bands, other things go hand in hand sometimes and it's just a matter of if you want to work it in or you want to work out with that said yes, substances happened with musicians and as a as a photographer it's your job not to imbibe in that stuff. I mean, I've been on the road and I've seen everything and I don't do that that's not my thing, I'm there to capture a moment you also have to have the trust of an artist that if you're going, can I look at you? Is that all right? If you have to have the trust of the artist that if you capture something that shouldn't be out into the world that you do not put it out in the world, you are not going to t m z if you turn around and send something that t m z because you got something happening, you use instant credibility, you will not be let back stage ever again, so if you ruin that yeah you'll never get back here to do this stuff again I mean that that's what it's all about watch for things on the tables we've got all this junk up here we have a bottle opener for wine we've got another light we've got bags there's a switch right there and this light sucks but I love it I love this type of situation because I have to figure out what to do this chair and this wall is awesome it's just it's cool I'm probably and I'm usually not going to direct when it comes to this but I would probably save somebody's just going to sit around and hang out you know what we hang out on one side of this bench leslie you just just grab the bench and just sit there you guys were just conversing larry is running shop doing his thing cause the bass player runs the show the bass player keeps track of the merch keeps track of what else do you keep track of your the van driver all right so and I'm just I'm just looking I love the light that comes out of these lights this is not going to be the perfect situation for shooting but we're going to figure it out I'll jews my deforest like I did before and I'll break out the d thirty three hundred and you guys just fly on my fly on the wall over my shoulder stephen we good I saw you walking by. I was like stevens walking by. Does he need something? But in here, it's a lot of having the right gear fourteen to twenty four a wide angle lens. Maybe I'll just well, I'm tethered, but screw the tethering don't tell anybody I said that I'm going to I'm going to use the d thirty three hundred and I'll start with the eighteen to fifty five on here. Does that sound good? I know it doesn't matter, but I'm breaking the rules because and, you know, what's going on at an arrow right behind you see that's interesting there's an arrow on the wall. If I put her in the right position, then the narrow may show up, so I don't know what my settings are yet, so just keep conversing do your thing. I will direct a little bit when needed, but I'm at sixty four hundred s, so I'm at three twenty eighth of a second. The meter is telling me that I should be around it's telling me I'm at a thirtieth of three point five at eighteen, but I owe something I want to switch, I don't need to be continuous focus in here, I could get to a f single and and and do this stuff let's see how this looks it is sixty four hundred and it's with the kit lens and it's a little too bright I'm actually going to come down the thirty two hundred to make this work I think it works pretty well. Leslie that's perfect just keep doing your thing watch larry play minecraft so I'm gonna bump my eyes so down see, this is a more intimate setting so I'll just teach as I go along but I'm going to go and I'm going to go upto one fortieth of a second cause I don't want to get too much shake that's perfect hee hee before it wasn't you know it's strange company can we get like a boom mike or something but here take a look at this this is this is not the ideal uh I could solve the shutter speed down and do better I'm at thirty two hundred here, which isn't terrible in post with the raw file this is going to work well and again this is just what the kid lines you have a good look correct this this isn't bad at all so again for anybody out there asking can I do this with the d thirty three hundred or basic equipment? Absolutely yes, you can do it the other gear may make it better in terms of sharpness and clarity but you can make this happen and it's just a matter of figuring it out as we're shooting um so I'm definitely feeling the whole thing this is where v r is definitely going to come in handy at one twenty. Yes, let me tell all oh my god you write one this is where we are is definitely coming in handy we talked about that earlier in the state during the stage show there's not going to help much when when leslie is jumping around the stage but here she's relaxed maybe I think just lounging out before the show and that's working out because I can shoot at this photo that I just took is at one twenty fifth of a second it f three eight because I'm zoomed out from a time about twenty millimeters on this kit lens and I'm getting very good results and the v r is helping in this kit lends everything cool we're cool we're cool yes just keep going I love when the p a is like they come by and you're like what are you doing like all right I'm gonna put you right there and look look at me this time nice and I'm just re composing as I'm shooting I'll just show you leslie, I'll turn it around for you and then I'll show the people at home but that that is what we did and it basically works the lighting is fine, so basically what I'm doing, I'm getting the lighting right first because not much is going to change once we have this and I can focus in on shooting and it's the same thing there's no secrets to this after a while it comes down to your settings and then just tweaking things a little bit each way to get the right shot s so that's why we have that right there so I'm just going I'm going to direct a little I'm gonna well, that actually doesn't matter now that where it sits well with a gaffe taped it so I like that look right there lean your head back against the law and I also don't mind having that works I don't mind having this extra bright light here I think is going to die like this I'm not going to start I'm just going to do my thing because I know people are watching they can watch all they want now the five I got to go to sixteen hundred because as I zoom out this lens it's a variable aperture lands holy crap this goes up to twelve thousand eight hundred bluhm not going to do it oops actually took two photos there and they actually worked let me zoom and make sure I got it I'm going to just show people here real quick because we're not tethering but I might have five now I'm using the kit lens I zoomed out to a almost fifty some millimeters and I saw that it's variable aperture so when you have a variable aperture lens that means at eighteen is three point five as you zoom up your aperture is going to shrink meaning that you need to slow your shutter speed down the compensate for that it went to f five at five is not a great place to be but this d thirty three hundred took me to sixty four hundred eso without a problem and I just locked it in and I that's a very usable shot and you've a lightning bolt coming out of your head now that we didn't realize that's better than the alternative it is lightning bolt it's cool because this wall is cool and this is the interaction that you have with bands guys, you just you talk you have fun, you left and it lucien's them up and they just go about their way I mean, larry goes and plays minecraft he gets he's perfect into that that's good. I love that look right there. Boom! So I got that, um you know, I like that too. I haven't scootsie this way just a little bit, but I like the lightning bolt now tilt your head that way boom boom not boom for crack of lightning but boom because you have that let's show everybody at home a little on the dark side so I would have to figure out what to do from here the settings on this I know that's not going to do you any good one fortieth of the second thoughts because it went to five point six so to compensate for that I'm at one fortieth I'm just going toe slow my shutter speed down because it's a little dark here and I saw that it went to five point six out the fifty five, which is again the variable aperture lens you have to keep that in mind, I'm just going to drop my shutter speed and being that leslie isn't moving, I'm going to get that extra light I'm going toe one twentieth of a second, which breaks the rule that you're not supposed to shoot at a slower shutter speed than your focal length I'm going, I'm going to use the tuck method that we did earlier that's right talking my elbows in and I have vee are on to compensate for that, so we got a twentieth of a second I love this because we got an arrow and we have oh, this is awesome, chin down a little bit. You can hear how slow the shutter speed that is, but but there there's the result much better exposure it's a cool image that we can work with these candid shots or what it's all about uh, now, when we do so, the band is just hanging out. I'm going to switch over to the d for us now that I showed you that you can do this just so that we can tether and have that stuff pop up on the screen, put this back together while while I'm switching lens. Russ, do we have any questions ready? We've got a couple questions from folks asking specifically about know where I'm supposed to be looking right now. There we go, um, asking about, uh, the access and being feeling like it's being intrusive to the band when they're just sitting in here and you're wandering around so other than, like, the story you told about nora, is there any strategies that you have to kind of put the bandit ease with you? Yeah, be a human being, be yourself, don't be a fan, it comes down to that if you're a fan and you come out like, uh oh, you guys are going tomorrow to nevada, what's it like when you do that and don't talk about the road, do your research, find out what the band is into. I hear we may have a lawyer in this band, do we exactly, so I heard that so we could talk about do you charge for paper clips? You know I'll be like I don't like when lawyers charged for paper clips that's that's wrong but but so you know, there's something that you can break the ice, do your research find out what they're into and in every band somebody has a camera there's one in every single band and larry told me at break that he has a cabin what do you have a d thirty three hundred? I believe here these guys don't worry about the michael just keep talking, he has it, he has a d thirty two hundred so you find that out and then you have a conversation that talks about something other than music and other than the gear of music and now they feel comfortable with you it's not going to be the case with every single band I've had instances where you just don't feel comfortable with an artist on most of time the artists are cool with you, its managers that end up being dicks they're the ones that you want their job to be a dick mostly, but then they always say no, the band doesn't care they want their picture taken. If you're cool cool, I like it dish px in a green room situations you ever direct the subject at times or does is it explicitly fly on the wall? Just hang out well, take pictures we've already done that I've already directed while we've been sitting here and that's fine, I mean, they're still candid if you see something that you want to capture there's no reason to say, you know what? Hold that or that arrow on the head was cool. A lot of times it goes two different ways you can let the band do their own thing, which is also good to get those candid moment because you don't want to interrupt, but at times, if they're willing, you're going to like, you know what, try this out, and then you just asked, the worse they're going to say is no, but they know your work's good just let you go and do it and a common situation that I think will come up eric s with people always on their phones, how do you get them to put it down? Well, uh, yeah, you've given some alcohol, you don't bring groupies in there on the phone, but they talk, but also phones give you an opportunity to light up the face and the low lights situation. Larry playing minecraft is there still light coming from the phone that's going to help give you some illumination to the face to get a shot? It may not be the most interesting thing and not every band back statelet people have this conception or misconception that backstage is a party nonstop I mean yes, we had a party before the camera turned on you guys didn't see it, but it it's not what everybody expects it to be it's not all drugs, sex and rock n roll just a little bit of everything at the same time I love it just one quick technical question folks are asking a lot of questions about the history graham and whether you actually pay attention of that when you're looking at the camera to get your exposure oh are you just getting close enough with the view on the back? A lot of people talk about the history, graham it's not something that I've really used myself I don't like it I for low light photography it throws the history ram you see a huge spike to one side or the other so that spike doesn't give you a representation of the actual scene. I know that if we were to look at the history graham here it's going to be a huge bike one side because it's totally dark I can't tell from that history graham whether my exposure is right or not, but if I look at the screen I mean, would you like to look at the matrix and try to read it or would you like to see the result right in front of your face I like seeing it right in front of my face. I'm the when it comes to pictures well depends it depends what it is, what whatever. But I know that that's what I'm saying with that, I'm not a big fan of the history, graham. I just think he gets thrown off with what we're doing here on occasions. I may look over to it, but a lot of it is getting it as close as possible in the camera to get the exposure right. So, like we did here, we tweaked it when it went to five point six, I didn't realize that that the variable I mean, I know the variable aperture lens is going to go to five six, but I saw that it did. I realize that the image was a little too dark, I compensated for it, and with the basic gear, we sat here in a dark green room and made it happen love it on dh, then one from kevin t in glasgow. Do you find that the bands on a high after the show and are possibly more pumped to have their pictures taken them before the show? What would be your preference? Before after and I heard its mooring department, which which high you're getting and when right so that that can go many different ways? I found that well you can go. It can go many ways. I found, though, that you have more time before the show to get some interesting things. When I was on tour with perry farrell, he would do yoga every single time, so he's on the mat for twenty minutes and I did some shots where I got up into it. There was a loft in one place in in phoenix, and I shot straight down on him with a wide angle, and I saw all his clothes set up for the show and everything getting ready for the day. And, you know, the best shots happened that candid before the show after the show. If it's a bad show and these people start and they hate each other and they yell, you may not want to be there to get the photos, or you may want to get there to do that. But after the show, they're usually crashing, breaking down on dh, then loading out. So I think that eighty three point two percent of the time before is going to be better.