Welcome to Episode 4. This time round we'll be looking at some shots of a comedian at last years Belladrum Festival in Scotland. I was there as a musician and had a lot of time to kill as we were the last act of the day. Festivals are great places to photograph as you get a huge amount of things going on in a relatively small space. There's live bands, comedians, fire eaters, vendors and some of the craziest humans on the planet! Click HERE to see a blogpost I did at that time for more shots from Belladrum Festival.
I could hear laughter coming from the tent and wandered in to see what was happening. I got the impression most of the audience were waiting for their favourite band to come on, rather than letting themselves enjoy this comedian's act. I didn't catch his name, but he was pretty good. Maybe someone will recognize him and let me know? Remember to click on any of the photos for larger versions!
So here's the contact sheet, shot in colour as always. All taken with the X-Pro1 with the 35mm f1.4 at 3200 ISO. There's nothong interesting in the colours here and certenly nothing that adds to any of the photographs, so it's black and white time (reaches under the desk for the one prepared earlier).
You can see from the black and white contact sheet that it's much easier to spot which ones work and which ones don't. Colour has the ability to make things more complicated, but black & white cuts it down to the basics.
The ones with the red X's are all missed focus. It's nothing against the X-Pro1 as it was very dark in that tent. The ones with the red outline are my picks and I could use any of them. Although I haven't outlined DSCF7362 (second one up on the left hand side), I actually quite like the amount of negative space in that shot. I chose the second last shot as my favorite because it's more af an action shot. He lunges forward to hammer home the punch-line. The rim light on his back is quite nice too!
This is it straight out of the camera, but rotated slightly to fix a tilt to one side. I'm sure you'll agree that the colours (what little there are), don't really do much to enhance the photo. The open door revealing the night sky is also a distraction.
I think this shot works well in black and white, which also brings out that rim light on his back. I decided to crop it down slightly to remove the second bank of stage lights that were creeping in on the upper left hand side. I found they were a distraction and could take your eyes on a little detour. The conversion to b&w was done in Nik's Silver Efex Pro 2, where I started off by using the Wet Rock preset (you've gotta start somewhere!). It took care of the open doorway enough to no longer be a distraction. I then added slightly more contrast, a bit more grain and I was done.
So that's it for this installment. I'm aiming to do a new Digital Contact Sheet on the first Tuesday of each month, which should be easy to remember. As usual, if you have any comments or suggestions, stick them in the box below.