After visiting Devil’s Tower, we ate a quick lunch at the cabin and then headed to Spearfish’s “Art in the Park” festival—great festival with a lots of interesting people, good entertainment, tons of food and many art vendors.
Interesting people means: Street Photography, which most of you who follow my blog know, is probably my favorite type of photography. Why do I like street photography? Because I have no idea what I will get! Plus, the subjects and conditions are constantly changing which means I must constantly adapt.
Students from Steve’s shop were schedule to perform starting at 3:00 PM, so we arrived a little before then. I promised Steve that I would take photos of his students.
When we arrived, a jazz band was playing. They were very good. I immediately noticed the drummer, who was a friend of my brother. He has such an interesting face and he was definitely into the music. I wanted the photo to be about him, but his colorful shirt and background would mean that the photo had to be black and white.
Unlike most black and white or toned photos that I do, this one was done totally in Lightroom. I did not intend this, but, as I was playing around with different presets, I liked what I was seeing in the preview window. I tried a lot of different things but finally settled on a sepia toned image—it just seemed to fit the scene.
Enjoy.
Camera settings: Nikon D3, Nikon 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 at 300mm, shot at ISO 200, f/8 and 1/125th of a second.
Post Processing:
What an interesting shot. A couple of comments though. First, if you were open to changing content I might consider taking out the microphone behind him -- it's a distraction for me. Also, there doesn't seem to be a connection between the person and the cymbal. So if I hadn't read your back story, I'm not sure I'd realize that we was the drummer, so it might be nice to have him looking toward the cymbal and ideally a hand in the frame with a drumstick playing. And at 125th shutter speed, maybe getting a little blur worked in, which would work great with the nice bokeh in the background. I know this is street photography, and you take what you get, but just throwing out a couple of ideas I had after seeing this image.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Steve, without the backstory, you do not know he is a drummer. Not sure whether I like the mic or the cymbal or not. I think it frames him well, however, I am not sure it adds much to the story.
ReplyDeleteDebbie
The photo is lacking any interesting point. Seems flat.
ReplyDeleteCharles M
He has a very interesting face, I can see what drew you to shoot his portrait. But I agree that some of the protruding elements are somewhat distracting, especially the microphone as I do like the cymbal and the background bokeh is wonderful. I wish the drummer was not looking that direction but at the photographer or even to the left. And in a perfect world it would be great to have a drumstick included. I really like the sepia effect you have used. Did you shoot other frames of him?
ReplyDelete