Over the last few months, on occasion this blog has become a bit of a family affair and has featured my father, my brother, my wife, my brother-in-law, my sister, my niece and my nephew. Today I again keep it in the family with another photo of my sister Úna, taken on Saturday night in Charlesfort as she performed with Slovenian folk group Terrafolk at Kinsale Arts Week.
Úna and I arranged a while back that I would take photographs for her and the band at the gig and so I have a few hundred shots to go through and edit as soon as I get a chance, but on a quick scan last night this one caught my eye and I ran it through Aperture very quickly.
I almost certain that Úna won’t like this photograph – or that I’ve posted it without her approval. Sorry sis – consider it my fee! It’s a close-up shot and she’s not smiling – two things which she may say are reasons I shouldn’t post it.
To me this photograph shows an intense concentration on her playing that illustrates how seriously she takes her performance – one of the reasons for her success as a professional musician. I like this aspect of the shot.
What I like most about the shot though is the lighting, especially given the difficult lighting conditions that were present during the concert. It was an outdoor gig in the evening and there were just a handful of lights scattered around the covered stage with no lights shining on to the stage from the audience. Additionally, six of the lights were at the back of the stage shining forwards and very often in the frame, making getting the correct exposure difficult.
Initially I used the lights at the back of the stage as hair lights – framing so that the performers head was between me and the light. Of course the band move around as they play so this was ok for a few shots, but I needed to handle having the light in the frame also. My solution to this was to spot meter and ensure that I metered for the face – using the histogram then I added some exposure compensation either way to try to keep the face well exposed but keep the light from blowing out completely. My best shots, such as the one above, came when Una or the other band members stood somewhere on stage that was also lit by a stage-front light. In fact in this photograph you can tell from the shadows that the main light on Una is slight to her right, in front and below her.
As the concert progressed and the ambient light level dropped I bumped up the ISO to maintain hand-holdable shutter speeds (and all the time I was working with an f/2.8 aperture). Shooting in RAW helped me alot too as I knew that it would give me some leeway on the exposure and allow me to push the picture a little bit further in post processing to get a good result.
Saturday night was one of those occasions where I simply had to take photographs and to do so required working within the constraints of the environment, including falling ambient light levels and insufficient artificial light. On this occasion fast lenses, some good technique, shooting in RAW and no doubt a little bit of luck all came to my rescue.
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