Location Folio - Documentary

Documentary Location

Description:

I will be doing documentary photography of Blues Musicians performing in local venues. The challenge here will be making good photographs in venues that have poor lighting and backgrounds and maintaining the ambience of the gig using available light. The reason for choosing this as my location project is I regularly photograph these types of events and want to concentrate on them and improve my portfolio.

The documentary will be not be a specific individual or band but rather a selection of various local musicians. The reason is local artists play quite infrequently only once and sometimes twice a month in various pubs and clubs around town.

Output:

Estimate this portion of the folio will contain about 10 A3 prints, with a combination of portrait and landscape orientation the reason being that lead singers are best handled in portrait format while guitarists are sometimes better captured in landscape to encompass the entire guitar. Based on past experience with the lighting situation in many of the venues it may well be that this folio will be presented in B&W or other monochromatic treatment. B&W may be the better presentation method for musicians shot in low light high ISO situations as there is something about the mental feeling of viewing B&W reminiscent of early photos of musicians. Admittedly, young people have grown up with colour photos of their musicians, the Blues crowd is older and even the young musicians are use to seeing their ‘hero’s’ of early blues only in B&W photos.

Samples:

Dick Waterman, http://www.dickwaterman.com, potographed musicians for over 40 years.  Samples attached.

James Fraher, http://www.bogfire.com, photographer for over twenty-five years … he maintains an archive of stock photographs with an emphasis on music (blues, folk, jazz, zydeco, celtic).

Costing:

Venue entry free.

Printing ten A3 prints at CIT $112.50.

Petrol $50

Foam Core $30

Time-line:

Week 5-8 – Attend Blues gigs and make some photographs for project.

Week 6-9 – Sort and post-process photos for folio and prepare for printing

Week 10 – Print folio photos and mount.

   

Images below selected for location from a large selection of images taken at various venue: Harmonie German Club; National Press Club; Queanbeyan Bowls Club; Canberra Bowls Club; Rose Cottage; Digress Lounge; Statesman Hotel; Woden Southern Cross Club; Artist Shed and Brassey Hotel.

Images were imported to Lightroom 4  and some basic touchup was done. Opened the images in Photoshop CS5 for conversion to B&W and additional modifications with a final slight sepia tone applied to all images at exactly the same tone to ensure the images would have the same feel when displayed together.

The first two sets were eliminated from the final selection as they did not fit in the overall folio. The first set was the only photo selected that was taken in an outdoor venue while all the others were taken interior shots.

The second set was eliminated from the final selection because of the lack of contrast, mid-tones in the image and it too did not sit well with the other images in the set. Although those two sets of images did not fit in this portfolio they still remain strong images in my opinion for future folios and historical background on the Canberra local music scene.