Jimmie Bratcher Live

I was privileged to see Jimmie Bratcher in concert at our church last night. For those who don't know, Jimmie Bratcher is a blues guitarist and singer. He is also a preacher who travels and shares his message in many places that are unusual, like blues bars around the country.

I have been looking for an opportunity to photograph a performer in action, so I grabbed the camera and decided to see if I could get any good shots. I started out using the external flash, but the venue was so large and so dark that all I got was properly exposed people with very dark backgrounds.

I was not at all happy with the photographs I was getting, so I put away the flash and switched over the nifty-fifty (50mm f/1.8 II) and set it on f/2.8. I had to adjust the ISO to 1600 in order to properly expose the photographs which made me very nervous. I have had very poor results with ISO 1600 in the past. The photographs were not sharp and were very noisy, and I always felt they were unusable. However, I heard another photographer say he routinely used ISO 1600 when shooting weddings and the key was not to underexpose the photographs. So, I payed special attention to exposure and even started by overexposing the shots by +1. These looked like they were coming out a little bright on the LCD. It is tough to use this to judge by because I find photographs are usually a little darker than what the display shows. The histogram looked OK and none of the highlights were blown out, but I still felt the shots were a little overexposed so I dropped it back down to zero exposure. These felt like they were coming out just about right. I shot about 70 exposures. When I got home and began processing them, I was kind of nervous. I was really expecting grainy, noisy photographs, but I was pleasantly surprised. I did use the Canon DPP software to perform some luminance noise reduction, and this also seemed to work very well. These may not be perfect, but considering the challenging conditions and the fact I was using a lens that costs less than $100, I am very happy with how they turned out. Lesson learned...good shots can be achieved with high ISO under the right conditions.

WaterFire 2007 in Kansas City

My blog does not reflect it, but this has been a busy week or so for me from a photographic standpoint. So busy in fact, I could probably have made 3 blog entries, but I chose to shoot instead. =)

I spent a couple of hours in the studio doing some more microstock work. I submitted 11 new photographs, and Fotolia accepted 7 of them, which brings my count up to 13 active photographs with them. I would like to be up to 50 by the end of the year. I have not heard back from BigStockPhoto or Dreamstime yet.

I also spent last weekend shooting photographs for a project on http://www.morguefile.com/ called The 11th Hour. For three days, photographers from around the world shot photographs of whatever they were doing at 11am and 11pm Greenwich Mean Time. For me that was 6, and since I was sleeping at 6am each day I only took photographs during the 6pm hours. This was a fun project to be involved in and it forced me to look at my everyday surroundings with a new eye so I could try to get some interesting photographs.

I also spent some time on Sunday with my daughters as models trying to get some "back to school" and other concept shots. They were thrilled with being models until they found out they could not wear whatever they wanted or pose however they wanted. I had a very specific set of shots in mind and I think that sucked the fun right out of it for them. Combine that with 90+ degrees in the sun, reflectors that were shining in their eyes, and a photographer who has never worked with models before and you will not be surprised no useable photographs came out of the shoot. Still, I learned a few things, so it was not a total loss.

Last night there was a new event in Kansas City called WaterFire. This has been done elsewhere before with great success, and I was excited about the opportunity to photograph it.WaterFire is an event where they put 80 giant braziers in Brush Creek near the Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, filled them with wood and kept them burning all night. The effect of the fire combined with the water was quite impressive. TONS of people turned out for this. As you can see in the top photograph they also had fire juggles, fire breathers, and various other dancers and performers. It was a very cool event.
I am hosting a photograph contest on http://www.morguefile.com/ called DANGER! The idea is to take photographs of anything that shows danger, signs about danger, or people doing dangerous things. When I saw the fire breather I was thrilled and tried my best to get near him for a photograph. At first he was across the river from me. Then he was on a bridge two blocks away. I chased this guy through the crowd all night, but by the time I caught up with him, they were done performing for the night. I was SO bummed. Fire breathing is one of the most dangerous things you can do as the risk of accidentally inhaling the flames or fuel is tremendous and the damage that can cause instantly is horrific. If they said they were done, I was not about to push them. I did manage to get photographs of one of the fire jugglers, so that is some consolation.

It has been a great week. I hope next week provides as many opportunities for photographs as this one did.