Today I had only one rather tiny shoot. My boss’s daughter’s band was playing at a local “watering hole” so I took myself out to see them along with my younger daughter.
I should take a brief moment to talk about my ideas on the word “boss.” I think when most people think about their boss they think of Mr. Spacely, George Jetson’s boss, an autocratic jerk who has a rather unilateral relationship with his employees. For whatever reason, I’ve never had that sort of interaction with a manager. I once received a review from a manager that I disagreed with. I argued my point and a few days later they apologized for reviewing me unfairly. That’s my experience with bosses. In the current case I consider my boss not only a manager but also a friend. If I felt the need I could tell him that he’s completely full of shit. I’d tell any manager this but in his case he might well expect it. So far it’s not been required. Anyway, enough banter.
So for this show there were a few hard things. Firstly, this was in a bar so the lighting wasn’t superb. It was good enough to take photos but not good enough to take GOOD photos. My goal is always aiming towards capturing that pivotal moment, that quintessential nanosecond in which something happens with the performers. In this case I was stuck just capturing… something.
One thing I recalled pretty quickly was the difficulty of photographing musicians who are still in the process of learning. Seasoned artists, once they’ve been at it a while, only seem to be ancillarily playing their instruments. When they’re still learning though they are very often focused downwards. This makes for rather poorer photos.
That said, it was good to get out to a small venue again. It’s hard to shoot in such a place because of my overwhelming desire to stay “out of the way” but I feel I still got some reasonable photos. It’s also good to not come home with 1000 frames to weed through.
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