Casino Royale 009 Presented by Junior League

On Saturday night I photographed the Casino Royale 009 event held at the Hyatt in Fort Lauderdale. The event was put on by the Junior League. I was asked to shoot the event by Jennifer of Littles Studios. It was a charity event and it was a success. Attendees had their choice of casino games to play and could join poker tournaments.

A great band played off and on all night long. It's funny how I find myself drawn to photographing musicians.

 

As they danced, the singer and her date reminded me of a couple at their wedding. They seemed to be so in love with each other. I waited for them to be in just the right position to get the rim light that is provided by the spot light in the far end of the room that lit up the stage.

By the end the night I was bored with taking the snapshot of people with just on camera flash. When Jennifer asked me to take a photo of her and her husband I decided to get creative. The Bond girls had used these white trays all night. They carried around poker chips, money, and drinks around on them. I asked a fellow photographer to help me and reflect my SB800 with the tray.

Jennifer was smiles all night and did a great job of organizing on the event. Using the tray as a large light source gave a nice soft light and I dragged the shutter at 1/5 of a sec to bring in the background.  My on board flash was used to trigger the SB800 and for fill.

Stampede @ Murphy's

If you gave me a choice of an environment to shoot a show in I would choose big lights, big stage, no flash. Not always the case. I try to use flash as little as possible because in most situations the scene becomes flat and the shadows created are distracting. For Stampede the few lights that they had up at Murphy's weren't putting much light out. I did get a good sequence of shots with my camera pushed to ISO 3200 at 1/50 and f 2.8.

The optimal situation to use flash at a venue is when the ceiling is not too high and it is a light color. The ceiling for Murphy's is an off white color. During Stampede's set I used my flash bounced into the ceiling with my bounce card on my Sb-800 up to reflect light forward.

It is important to feather your flash when shooting a group with each person at different distances from camera. With this composition, I pointed the flash towards the guitarist to evenly light each member of Stampede.  Notice the dark background on the right. Lighting the musicians takes precedence over the scene.

Stampede is a reggae band out of Deerfield Beach, Florida. They got a great vibe and are a good group of guys. You can check out there music at myspace.com/stampederoots . Check out the rest of the photos from the show

Classic Portraiture

I just completed my Classic Portraiture class and I am relieved. I learned a lot about posing in the class which some times can make your subject feel a bit awkward. There is only so long a subject can sit in a statuesque pose without losing the expression in their face. I'm not one to restrict myself to guidelines while shooting which made it somewhat frustrating to have to stick to the parameters of the poses. As you get better at posing and guiding your subject it becomes a natural process. An important part of the class is to recognize facial lighting patterns and have control of the main light to create them. Now I find myself thinking "Rembrandt!" as the light falls over someone's face in such a pattern.

So here are some of my final portraits for the class

Creed, Staind, and Lo-Pro at Cruzan Ampitheatre

I have always been a fan of Creed. Their album "My Own Prison" was great. I'm not a big fan of some of their later material, but I have always been impressed by them in concert. They are one of the best sounding live bands I have heard. Some of my friends disagree. It seems the backlash from their earlier days lives on.

For the whole night photographers were restricted to the right of the center walkway which Scott Stapp made his way out on a few times.

Creed had some explosive pyrotechnics going off during their first song. Unfortunately I did not get anything I liked with flames in the background, but did get this shot of Mark Tremonti shredding with the explosion behind him. 

Check out more photos from Creed and the rest of the show