With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Originally published 2 June 2021

The other day I got to take some promotional shots for indie band Dash Ripshaw. They were rehearsing that evening anyway, so it was a good time for me to come along and take some candid shots for them.

To date this was probably the most intensive session I’ve done, in a sense that I had to think about more specific aspects with intent compared to my other shoots which were really more reactive in nature. The great thing about not being a photographer is the ‘no-pressure’ approach - when I was asked to do the shoot I made sure to emphasize the very real possibility of no shots being useable! The only pressure was the one-sided benefit where, regardless of outcome, I get to learn something while they potentially end up wasting their time. Luckily I had a few photos turn out decent!

When they described the warehouse they rehearse in as not being well-lit, I finally had a good excuse to get some extra lights. I’ve been eyeing them for a while now but never did think of a project to use them on. I got a budget kit of 2x GVM 50RS lights, literally the same afternoon of the shoot. I had just flown back from Dunedin at midday and went to go pick up the lights before going back to work for the afternoon. I had never used these lights before, let alone used continuous lighting in general, but the best way to learn is by doing, I suppose.

*42mm, f/2.8, 1/30s, ISO 3200 | Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8*

As you can see above, the band set up in the open area of the warehouse (you can still see some of the warehouse equipment in the background). I set up the lights in front of the band on their left and right, facing them towards the middle. We turned the warehouse lights off, and both 50RS lights were strong enough at max setting to light up the band well. I think it would have been better with the bigger model of lights but that kit would have been prohibitively more expensive. The only other light was coming from the windows and entrance to the office area, as seen below.

*16mm, f/7.1, 1/30s, ISO 3200 | Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8*

One of the things I thought of beforehand was to try doing some backlit shots. The test photo above was to check for settings and exposing it correctly (I found it quite tricky, to be honest). And after settling on a reasonable level it was a matter of timing for a good composition. I try not to ‘get involved’ in what I’m shooting, as in I don’t like staging photos. The way I look at photography tends to be more of a ‘if it’s gone, it’s gone’ philosophy - not that I’m against staging photos, I simply am more comfortable with how I’ve done things so far. So in this case, I didn’t ask the band to stand in specific places, etc, I just moved myself around (and my equipment, where necessary) to get the shot I wanted like below.

*14mm, f/5, 1/50s, ISO 3200 | Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8*

I also had a small speedlite with a remote trigger that I could set anywhere around the band by mounting it on my tripod. If you look at the photo below I set up the tripod (it’s not extended so it’s closer to the ground) to the drummer’s right, almost against the wall. The idea was to take a photo of the singer with the flash providing the backlight.

*12mm, f/2.8, 1/100s, ISO 3200 | Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8*

I was quite pleased as I basically managed to produce a photo ‘as planned’. As such, the shot below is one of my favourites. Maybe the only thing I might redo with it would be to increase the speedlite’s power. You can see the effect most notably on the sleeves, with a bit on the right leg and the guitar cable, but I would have preferred a more pronounced effect.

*42.5mm, f/1.4, 1/250s, ISO 1600 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

Every now and then I’d pick up the speedlite to set it around the band, but I focused less on the backlighting after I got a few decent attempts and focused more on using it as a fill light against the 50RS key lights.

I think the other main thing I explored was using lighting and shadows with more intent on providing atmosphere to the photos. If you look at an old shoot where I took some photos of a jazz band, the photos were exposed brighter to show more detail, but they end up looking quite flat to me. At the time I was focusing on bringing up the shadows to make the photos lighter (and if you look at my history so far there’s an overwhelming focus on bright pictures). For some reason I equated positive exposure compensation as being better, whereas it’s only a starting point for considering what the ‘correct’ exposure is. The next couple of shots in my eyes are the correct exposures for the type of photo I wanted to create. Both are comparatively darker to what I’ve tended to edit towards, but they’re more true to the atmosphere of the rehearsals.

*80mm, f/2.8, 1/250s, ISO 3200 | Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8*

*42.5mm, f/1.4, 1/125s, ISO 1600 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

And, combining the set up of lighting and more controlled editing, another one of my favourites is below.

*42.5mm, f/2.8, 1/100s, ISO 1600 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

At one point I tried playing with the RGB setting on the 50RS lights to create a more interesting atmosphere. I had very mixed results with these lights, mainly because I did not clue myself up on colour theory before. I chose some colours that I thought would make interesting photos, like the green and fuchsia below. And in some ways it’s more interesting than plain white lights, but it’s not exactly a great combination when it comes to editing. Serviceable, but not quite what I expected or intended.

At least it was a good lesson in learning more about the editing tools in Adobe Lightroom. The next two shots below show some progress, if you could call it that, with editing. The original image was a dominant red shade (the light on the guitarist’s side was set to red) but I brought it back to have red more as an accent rather than a full shade. This is somewhat contrary to what I talked about earlier regarding shooting things ‘truer to the atmosphere’ but in terms of pure taste I preferred to tone it down a bit.

You can see I tried to do the same with the next photo, but the editing is more obvious since the background lighting coming from the office windows towards the right (which had whitish lights) have taken on a green hue. But to me it looks better than the predominantly red looking shot.

*42.5mm, f/2, 1/100s, ISO 1600 | Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95*

And as alluded to earlier, I’m not comfortable doing staged shots. You can really tell with the photo below where we attempted to do a group shot. I had no idea about posing in general, so we just took a lot of shots and hoped that one of them turned out ok. To be fair it was done at the very end of the rehearsal and I was all thought out by then (not that it’s an excuse!) Oh well, something to work on for sure.

*17mm, f/2.8, 1/250s, ISO 1600 | Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8*

Some more shots are below. A few of them were originally in colour with the RGB lights, but I preferred the black and white edit as I felt the colours were either too washed out or didn’t really give anything more to the photo, but the compositions were still reasonable.

I had a lot of fun with the shoot, and it was definitely something that gave me a lot of learning opportunities!