What better way to describe John Digweed’s recent headlining performance at Knitting Factory Concert House as one that will go down in the record books as mind melting, jaw dropping and a pure form of aural stimulation. It will also go down in my personal record books as one of the toughest shoots I’ve ever experienced. In general, there was very little usable light in the venue, Mr. Digweed was in no way, shape or form in what one would call ‘direct’ light and to top it off there were super-powered lasers adding an extra layer of challenge to the mixing bowl of variables for the evening.
The crowd was dancing up a mild storm and the lighting installations were moving all over, so the traditional methods of identifying a pattern of usable light and waiting for the right moment to snap was tossed right out the window. While some photographers may throw in the towel and try to salvage the rest of their evening, this lens jockey started to experiment, and take all those notes he’s been reading over at IShootShows.com and put them to good use.
Most of the images found in the John Digweed, Erik Lobe Gallery were shot at ISO 6400 with aperture of f/2.8. What I found to be my secret weapon of the evening was a range of shutter speed from my standard 1/250th of a second going all the way up to 1/10th of a second (as seen in the image above). Due to this experimentation, what ended up taking place was a lot more light being let in to properly expose the shots, with a tradeoff of a slightly less ‘focused’ end result whenever John’s face actually made it, visibly, into the shot. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely would not have been able to bring back the shots I did if it were not for the Nikon D7000 + AF-S Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED body and lens combination and the Kata KT DW-495, aka oversized fanny pack, helping keep my lens pen, earplug case, extra battery, point-and-shoot LUMIX, iPhone charger and water bottle close at hand throughout the evening. Oh, and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 is a godsend for bringing out the ‘hidden’ lighting captured in these .NEF RAW photographs.
All lighting gripes aside, this was a fantastically amazing show to have taken part in, and the performing artists (John Digweed, Erik Lobe) brewed up a piping hot pot of danceable beats, chest-pounding bass and brain-bending visualizations; which validated that excited feeling of stepping into a rave … right in downtown Reno!
Check out the full photo gallery by clicking through the link below (see the big, ALL CAPS lettering?) and commenting on this post with your experiences at this show or ones similar!
VIEW THE FULL JOHN DIGWEED, ERIK LOBE GALLERY HERE
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