Back in the saddle again with The Pony

Wow, I’ve totally neglected the blog! I took a big roadtrip recently, and have a couple recent weddings to post that I’ll get around to shortly… I’m assisting at a couple more this weekend too! Good to be busy.

A couple of days ago The Pony asked me to do some quick promo shots for them. We set up in Dave’s garage. The black curtain behind them wasn’t too big, so I was limited in terms of shooting angles, but I think we got some good shots overall. I knew they were doing a throw-back 80’s thing, but I didn’t know they were really going all out with the make-up and costumes. All we needed was some coke and a few exotic dancers and it would have felt like the set to a Def Leppard video. Look what you’ve done to this rock n’ roll clown…

Anyway, on to the pics… We used a shoot-through umbrella on the right and a silver bounce umbrella on the left for most shots, except the second and third, where we didn’t use flash on the right. On the first shot I also used a bare flash set up on the left to get the flare effect. Took a few tries to get the flare angle we wanted, but we finally nailed it. I covered up half the shoot-through umbrella with a black plastic garbage bag so we wouldn’t get too much spill on the black curtain behind them, which we wanted to go to full black, or at least as black as possible.

Here comes The Pony, and nothing’s going to stop it.

Cave of Love, by Jenni

OK… some background… a few months back, my friend Dave purchased a song at a charity service auction from the very talented singer/songwriter Jenni B. Roake. Jenni agreed to write a song and perform it for Dave. The song was to be written in the style of an ’80’s power ballad, and sung from the point of view of Dave – as if Dave were the singer. In essence, Jenni channeling Dave in ’80’s piano power ballad style. A recipe for total awesomeness. We’ve got a piano in my apartment, so Jenni came over to perform the song for Dave and 15 or so special guests. Once I saw Jenni all decked out with the make-up and hair, and pulling the candles out of her bag, I knew I had to get some sweet shots.

(warning, photo geek talk ahead…)
I set up a remote flash that I gelled with 1.5 CTO, and then dialed in the aperture to get a good flash exposure. I was getting too much spill from the flash, so I put a couple gobos on it to block the light a little. I wanted to make it look dark, contrasty, and a little surreal, but also like the light was coming naturally from the candles. Once I had the aperture set for the flash exposure, I was able to play with the shutter speed to get the ambient candle exposure just where I wanted it. I’m pretty happy with the results. The song was about 4 minutes long, so I didn’t have too much time to get tons of shots. If I were to do it again, I think I’d try a bounce behind her to see if I could throw a little light back on the piano.

Most importantly, the song rocked, pure awesome, and everyone gave Jenni a huge ovation. Thanks for rocking at my house, Jenni! The song’s a hit, just need to record it and get a sweet video made.

Trailer Choir Video Shoot

On May 4th I got to head to downtown LA to document the video shoot for Trailer Choir’s song “Off The Hillbilly Hook”. The song is catchy – it’s gonna be a hit, I guarantee it! The band were super cool; the shoot was high-energy and tons of fun. Thanks for having me y’all! Here’s my favorite pics from the day:

Dodos! Akron/Family! Live!

On Friday, May 2nd, I went down to the Los Angeles Natural History Museum for what turned out to be one of my favorite concerts ever. I’ve become a big Akron/Family fan over the last year, and this was my first chance to catch their heralded live act. The Dodos opened the evening with a fantastic set. They’re a great San Francisco band that I’ve been hearing more and more buzz about. I guess their drummer is the cousin of the guitarist who replaced me in Love is Chemicals after I left that band and moved to LA. And, according to Nate, he is the only other person in the world besides me who loves the Love is Chemicals song “Misery Card”. Really, Nate, I know there’s someone else out there who loves that song. Somewhere that person exists. It’s a big world.

Anyway, the show was phenomenal. It was rather crowded, so I took all the shots from the same spot, and all with my 85 f/1.8 lens. It was a bit too crowded to risk changing lenses. Maybe next time I can get a press pass and run around backstage and use flash and all that fun stuff.

THE DODOS

AKRON/FAMILY

Todd Petersen, guitar hero

Todd needed some new promo photos. I needed to try out my new off-camera flash system. It was a match made in heaven. Todd is absolutely one of the most blazing guitarists I’ve ever met in person. His drive to keep late 80’s feel-good hard rock alive is admirable and infectious. He is both Axl and Slash. I’d be a liar if I told you I didn’t listen to lots of Guns n’ Roses for a few days after we did this shoot. Don’t let the tough guy pictures fool you, though, he’s really a funny easy-going guy in person. I promise.

The first part of the shoot we did in his garage with a black cloth background. By putting gobos on the flashes we were able to keep the background totally black. The second half of the shoot was in an alley near his house during sunset. We were having so much fun we shot for 3 hours and didn’t even realize it. Here’s my favorites from Todd’s rocker session during late November last year…

While Todd might have the real guitar chops to put me to shame, I stack up pretty well against him in Guitar Hero. Unless it’s a G n’ R song, in which case he’s pretty much always perfect. But give me Cliffs of Dover, and I’ll walk all over him.