Ugh...try sleeping with a headache.  It just isn't working tonight. So, since I can't sleep and the headache isn't going away anytime soon, how about a few pictures from Oranje 2011?

The Indy Oranje festival   is a one night festival/party/art and music festival on the near north side of Indianapolis.  This year was the 10th anniversary and I was fortunate to be able to photograph all of the fun.  I was also fortunate enough to work this event with my girlfriend, Rene, who was in charge of the VIP room. This was her second time working at Oranje and my first time, and I'm already looking forward to next year.  One thing is for certain, I plan on bringing much more extra cash next year and buy some of the art on sale.  So much fantastic art and so little money.  Oh well, I have a year to plot and plan.

One of the first photographs I took was of two models from a local studio called Bombshell Photography.  This picture was made outside and did I mention I was using a hotshoe flash that had only arrived the day before the event?   Talk about having a steep learning curve. I had used a hotshoe flash with my SLR, however it died a few years ago and I spent Friday night chasing the cats around the house trying to get used to the flash and hopefully to avoid bad photos at Oranje.  After burning through a battery pack (speaking of batteries, it's time to get some Sanyo Eneloops for the flash)

 These ladies were a lot of fun to shoot and thankfully they posed for several pictures.  The settings for this picture are:  f5.6, 1/50th and the ISO was 400.  I thought about setting my ISO to 100 or 200, but I wasn't sure of how the picture would turn out. It was very dark outside and like I said earlier, I was still basically experimenting with the flash settings.

This next picture is from Joy Carter's booth.  She had several very nice pieces of art hanging on her walls, but the main attraction were the two models that she body painted before and during the show.  The 'day of the dead' must have been painted during the day as she was on display from the minute the show opened   She also had a infinite amount of patience to put up with all of the requests to photograph her and to be photographed with her. My girlfriend, Rene was working as the hostess for the VIP room and I texted her to come upstairs and we both had our pictures taken with the "day of the dead" model. They make for great facebook avatars.  The little devil next to her was painted during the evening by Joy Carter.  She was also quite the center of attention during and after she was painted.  I think the two of them make a great picture.  This was made at f5.6, 1/60th and ISO 800.  I'm still not sure why I was shooting at ISO 800 in this area, plenty of light...could have been I was tired, this was done well after midnight.  Still, I like it a lot.

No article about Oranje would be complete without a picture of Tatu Billy the Witch Doctor.  He had some wonderful art in his booth and also had a fortune teller who was getting a lot of attention.  I hope she was able to give people some good news.  Yes, the snake around Billy's neck is real and was quite content to just hang out with Billy.  I love the clothes and the staff and I'm still surprised that Billy graduated several years after me from Manual H.S.  It just goes to show that you never can tell what will come out of your high school or neighborhood.  This shot was made at f9, 1/50th and ISO 400.  I'm not sure if I was experimenting with flash too much that night or what, but the camera settings were all over the place that night.  Still, they came out very well and I'm happy with the results. 

New Christy Minstrels at Spades Park

After the Innocent Boys finished playing, there was a rather long intermission as the next band, The New Christy Minstrels got ready to play. As they explained during the opening of their show, getting the sound correct for their band isn't an easy thing due to the number of people in their group.

It was a good show and I enjoyed the music, much more than I thought I would.  I recognized several songs and found myself humming along to them as I photographed the band.  I was able to get several good photographs of each member of the band and finally got some of them processed and posted online today. Here are three of them:

This is Dave Henderson, upright bass player for the group.  He also sang a song and played the keyboard while singing.  My setting for this picture were f5.6, ISO 1600 at 1/100th shutter speed.

This is Becky Jo Benson, singer and banjo player for the group.  She was a good person to shoot and I never saw her on stage without a smile.  The settings for this picture are the same as for the above picture.

This is a Greg O'Haver, guitarist for the group.  I enjoyed photographing him and especially catching his fingers on the strings.  He also had a good singing voice.  The setting for this picture are the same, except for the aperture which was set at f5.  He was more in the shadows than the other performers and need a bit more light to see him.

As with the Innocent Boys, the stage lights cast a horrible blue pall on the performers that just didn't look good.  I wanted to post the pictures as I photographed them, but that blue light just bothered me and I played with the white balance in order to get good skin tones for all of the members of both bands.   In previous pictures, I had never changed the white balance as much as I did for the members of these two bands.  My approach has always been to keep everything as close to how I saw it as possible, but not this night.  I'm happy with the white balance decisions I made for both bands.

I'm looking forward to more band/music photography; it is something I am really starting to enjoy.  

Innocent Boys at Spades Park

I was at a festival on Saturday, August 27th at Spades Park on the east side of Indianapolis.  The festival was called the Feast of Lanterns.  The festival had vendors, exhibitors, a lantern auction, community organizations along with games and a play are for the kids.  Throughout the park, were hung lanterns and festival lights. The larger lantern displays were to be lit with candles while the smaller lanterns would be lit with the festival or Christmas lights.

During the day and into the evening, several bands played on the main stage.  Most of them were so-so and I didn't feel as if I was missing much as I wandered around the park. While waiting for the lanterns to be lit, my main reason for being at the festival was to photograph the lanterns at night, I sat down to listen to a band playing on the main stage.

The band turned out to be the Innocent Boys, a local band from Indianapolis.  I really enjoyed listening to them play and realized what a great opportunity this would be to do some low light and concert photography.  So, off I went.  I primarily went for close up individual pictures of the band members.  I took a few wider angle shots of multiple band members, however I was determined to come out of the evening with some good shots of the band members.

The are around the stage was wide open, front, sides and in back of the stage.  I was shooting with a couple of other photographers and we didn't have any problems moving around the stage area to get pictures.  Of course, we respected the audience and didn't stand in their way during the show.  When I shot from the the front of the stage, i was sitting on the grass and I like that angle better than just relying on line of sight pictures which can be boring. Always change your viewpoint when photographing people, climb up on something or kneel/crouch to get a lower viewpoint.  In my opinion, changing your viewpoint makes the pictures so much better.

So, here are a few pictures of the band, starting with the Lead Singer/Guitarist and here are the settings: f5.6, ISO 1600 and 1/80th.  I know, a high ISO. Well, until I can get a good f2.8 lens, the higher ISO's will have to do for know.

I like how this picture turned out of the singer. The awful blue hues from the stage lights are gone and he looks much more natural.

Next, on to the very animated and great playing upright Bass player.  I'm not sure why, but he reminds me of a younger Tom Waits.

The settings for this picture are the same as for the lead singer.

Finally, on to a close up shot of the drummer:

In the left side of the picture, I cleaned up this picture a little by cloning out a light stand.  It was just too distracting.

The band had two additional members, a keyboard player and a guitarist.  I haven't quite finished with those pictures.  Maybe next week.

Next week, more from the Innocent Boys and pictures from the last band to play on Saturday, the New Christy Minstrels.  Have a good weekend!  

Long exposures in the midway

It is that time of year again in Indiana. And by that, I mean it is time for the State Fair!  I was fortunate enough to visit the fair a couple of times this year and had the opportunity to photograph some of the midway rides.  Unfortunately, more games, food stands and rides were packed into the midway area, making for a much tighter and confined space which took away a lot of the good vantage points for photographing the rides, unlike last year.  I was able to get three really good shots this year and I've posted those pictures below:

This is probably my favorite picture from the fair this year.  Not only was the swing set ride (YOYO) moving in the foreground, the ride in the background also started in motion. The colors in the game booths in the right of the picture also stand out very nicely.   I was really happy to see both rides in motion at the same time as I had waited a long time hoping to see both in action.  The rain and sparse crowds in the midway area had a lot to do with the minimal activity on the rides this night.  The black band that is present around the YoYo ride is the riders themselves in their swings.  I like the look of the rides against the blue sky just after sunset.  This settings for this shot are ISO 100,  f22 and a 6 second exposure. 

This is a closeup shot of the same Yoyo ride.  I was backed up against the bumper cars and had the lens as wide open as was possible. I was fortunate to not have people walking through the frame during this exposure and the picture turned out quite nicely as result. Sometimes the "ghost" images of people are quite useful and look good in some of the long exposure pictures I have done at the state fair, but for this one I'm glad I have a clean image. The settings for this shot are ISO 100, f22 and an 18 second exposure.

This ride is know as "Fireball" and this is so much better than the pictures I took of this same ride last year at the fair.  I was fortunate with this picture that the trucks and generators that cluttered my pictures of this ride last year from about this same view point were gone from the area this year.  I was able to get fairly close to the ride and made this wonderfully uncluttered picture of the ride.  This ride seemed to be very popular and it wasn't long before it was up and spinning and as a result, I have several good shots of this ride.  The settings for this ride were ISO 100, f22 and a 15 second exposure.

All in all, I had a good time shooting these rides at the fair.  The surroundings made for some tight angles and different compositions, but hey, I can't have it my way all the time when I am photographing, so in the end, I did the best I could and came up with some good pictures.  I had a lot of long stares and questions about what I was doing there, sitting on the ground looking up at these rides through a camera.  Most people liked what they saw when I showed them my results, while some people just shook their shoulders and moved on.  I guess they just couldn't understand the addiction of long exposure photography and moving lights!

If I can get motivated, I'll post a few more pictures from the fair this week. 

Duncan Schiedt, jazz musician photographer

Tonight at the meeting of the Indiana Photographic Society, we had the opportunity to listen to Duncan Schiedt, a noted jazz musician photographer.  Duncan has been photographing musicians for over 60 years and he has photographed some of the legends of the jazz world:  Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and many, many more great musicians. 

He told us of his first time listening to jazz music, via BBC radio while attending an English school.  After the overseas school trip ended, he returned home and was visiting a friend who showed Duncan his darkroom.  Duncan told us that after spending an hour in the darkroom, he was hooked on photography.  He then combined his two loves of jazz and photography into a lifelong passion.

His first ever picture was taken with an Argus camera and was of  Benny Goodman and Lionel Hampton (he showed us this picture tonight). He only shoots using film or slides and still develops and prints his own pictures.  All of his work in the jazz field are done in B&W because as he puts it "Jazz music is black and white due to it's range of emotions, moods and the brilliance of the music."

During his presentation, he showed us over 80 slides of some of the various musicians he has photographed over the years and also told personal stories about the musicians.  Some of the stories were about the musicians he has befriended while other anecdotes were about the pictures, asking the musicians to pose in a certain way or just about the process involved in taking the pictures.

In addition to his work photographing jazz musicians, he has also worked as a fashion photographer, theater photographer, worked in the film industry on over 100 16mm films and has written several books.  His first book was a biography about the life of Fats Waller.  His work has also been used by Ken Burns in the PBS series "Jazz".  He brought several books to the meeting and I purchased a book and he was gracious enough to autograph it for me.

All in all, it was definitely one of our best meetings and I was thrilled to see his work.  I didn't know many of the musicians in the pictures (I'm learning who they are now by reading his book), but I know great photos when I see them, and his are definitely wonderful.  This book is something I will definitely treasure and will use it as inspiration for when I am out with the camera. 

The Black Widow

The Black Widow
Originally uploaded by indykaleu

Ahh, the start of fair season here in Indianapolis. This is a shot of the Black Widow ride and was taken at the Marion County State Fair. I always loved this ride as kid and now I have a picture of it...haha

When Rene and I arrived at the fair it was raining, which was frustrating for me but it was also good as Indy has not had any decent rain in a long time. After walking around the fair for about 20 minutes and getting our caricatures drawn (fantastic work by the way), the rain stopped and we headed out once again to see the rides.

Rene pointed out that people were in line for this ride and we headed over for some pictures. I took a few pictures with another ride in the background, but when I went to process them this weekend, I thought the background ride was very distracting.

I'm glad I was able to get this shot from a different direction. This was an 11 second exposure, set at f22 and ISO 100. I do have another picture with a shorter exposure time that shows off the ride in more detail.

I'm just so happy that Rene didn't mind me wandering around to photograph the rides and put up with change of directions and standing around for several seconds. Sweetie, it's just too bad we weren't hungry. I can still smell the corn dogs. Oh well, we still have the state fair coming up this weekend.

How to Take Photos in Low Light – PictureCorrect

How to Take Photos in Low Light – PictureCorrect

This well help me a lot at night.