Last weekend, a regular client brought me on to shoot her benefit concert. Based on the last event I had shot for them, I opted to forgo most of my equipment and decided just to bring my trusty D750 and my old reliable 70-200. Side note, it’s always handy to bring something wide if your primary lens isn’t wide itself for the purpose of group shots… which I unfortunately didn’t get any on my camera.
I drove past the Tuning Fork as I looked for parking. I didn’t know anything about the place before going in on the day of, but it was a lot cozier than the last venue. It’s a nice space that seats a couple dozen patrons, and to the right of the entrance is a small performance space backlit by natural light, enough to hold a band, provided that the drummer either has a very small set or a cajon. It’s definitely a lovely place to spend an evening for a drink, dinner (I recommend the Oh So Cheesy with a tomato bisque on the side), and some nice light music. For a photographer, on the other hand, it’s a tough space.
A trend among a lot of trendier restaurants and stores is the use of ambient lighting: a low, warm light that keeps the ambiance a little on the darker side. If you’ve ever tried to take a photo in low light, you know the struggle of getting a nice shot. The mood lighting extended into the performance space as well—the only lights illuminating the stage were three small, red studio lights. Again, swanky if you’re a patron. Not so great as a photographer.
As golden hour came to an end about half an hour before the start of the show and as I was becoming more and more reliant on the lighting in-house, my mind was racing on how in the world I was going to shoot and get great shots in these conditions. I drew blank after blank before I decided just to stick to my guns and do the best I could.
As the first few acts progressed, the natural lighting gave way to the night, and I was pushing my shutter speed and ISO to levels beyond my comfort zone. Thankfully most of the performers were mostly stationary and my lens VR was solid, because I was able to get my shutter speed down to 1/50 while staying relatively sharp.
So most of my shots were properly exposed, if not just a little underexposed. I was pushing my shutter speed and ISO to levels outside of my comfort zone, but I was getting usable shots. Now the only issue was coloring—what could I do about this red hue?
As I got home and started looking through my photos on a bigger screen, I was relieved to see most of my shots were still usable, even at a shutter speed of 1/50s and ISO 8000. I was still stumped on what to do about the intense red.
I tried playing around with the warmth and tint of my white balance at first, but it really only made the pictures yellow or blue… not where I needed them to go. Then I started playing with the toning. I bumped the blacks up a bit to reduce some noise and then tried fixing the colors via split toning—I applied a subtle blue tone to the shadows and a greenish yellow to the highlights, and I got closer to what it would look like naturally without a red light. Even so, it wasn’t up to my standard of delivery.
Then, my eyes drifted to a little feature I rarely use… black and white. And there it was.
All of a sudden my color correcting problems were gone. With a little bit of toning and adding the slightest amount of saturation, I turned barely usable, just okay photos to gorgeous snapshots that better reflected the beauty of each performance. I made a few edits and reached out to my client to see if she was fine with the photos predominantly grayscaled, and she loved what I sent her. So I proceeded.
It’s really amazing what you can do if you shift your perspective and keep in mind all the options that you have available to you. With a little bit of creativity and imagination, those shots that at first just weren’t cutting it could end up being some of your best.
Take a quick trip over to my Flickr account to see the photos from this concert.