This past Friday I got the opportunity to shoot a band called Freedom Ride at the Rickshaw Theatre. The venue was pretty cool as I remember it well when I was a little kid. It used to be a Chinese movie theatre called Shaw Theatre that specialized in kung fu movies. That of course is many many years ago and it went out of business and remained unoccupied till recently. I have to say that this was my first real exposure to shooting a live band up close. I knew of course that flash wasn't allowed so planned on shooting with high ISO and fast lenses and timed my shots to the stage lighting changes. I was able to shoot from the front and edge of the stage plus from the balcony as well. We did manage to squeeze two minutes in the backstage area for the obligatory "band" shot before being told by the security guards to clear out. Here are some shots from the show. I cleaned up some of the noise in Photoshop and touched up some exposure in Lightroom for these shots below.
A special thanks to the band
Devin McManus -Lead Guitar and Lead Vocals
Slayad Nassir -Rhythm Guitar
Nat Green -Drums and backing vocals
James Weekes -Bass Guitar
Check out their MySpace page at
http://www.myspace.com/freedomriderocks
2 comments:
Awesome photos, love the colours from the stage lighting! Which lens did you use to avoid using flash?
All were shot at 1600 ISO and every lens I used was with the aperture wide open as far as it would go. Wide angle was 10-22mm EF-S, medium zoom was 28-70mm 2.8fL and from the balcony I used a 70-200mm f4L propped against the railing. Shutter speed is the biggest factor because even wide open and shooting at 1600 the shutter was around 1/30 sec so steady hands do prevail.
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