Lilac at Webster Hall: The Studio

Venue: Webster Hall: The Studio
Date: May 16, 2010

It was J Summit at Webster Hall this Sunday night. My friends, Lilac hosted the show with four other bands. The lighting was very dark and had constantly changing lights. It was a nightmare to shoot without flash. This was one of the nights I wish I had a FX body. Well, at least I had fast glass with me.

I felt in their previous show at Don Hill's, I was very conservative in my shooting style. This time I want to spice it up with different perspectives. My fisheye lens will come in handy. Despite the terrible lighting conditions (tons of people were flashing), I felt I did pretty well. Definitely captured the mood of the place. Some of my favorite shots were of Gabriel Tanaka (bassist), check picture below.

Vocaloid Magnet PV @ BBG

Series: Vocaloid
Characters: Miku, Luka, RinI remember just two years ago, the amount of people cosplaying at Sakura Matsuri equals to the amount of finger and toes I have. At Sakura Matsuri this year in Brooklyn, cosplay has exploded like regular people owning DSLR's. Cosplayers were everywhere and the "regular" people were confused. A few of my cosplaying con friends were there as well in their Vocaloid Magnet PV outfits. We took this opportunity to take some photos in the backdrop of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

The sun was harsh that day, not ideal for taking pictures of people. Fortunately I packed my reflector along. A few of my shots I had someone reflecting light into my subject's face. In one occasion, I had to block sunlight shining on the cosplayer's face. The two lenses I carried with me were the 17-55mm f2.8 and the 50mm f1.4. It was very bright. This day I wish I had a polarizer filter with me to shoot at large aperatures. An interesting thing I found out in post was I was missing focus with my 50mm prime a lot more than usual. Not really sure why this is happening. My shutter speed for most shots were in the 1000's so hand shake wasn't the issue. Am I missing focus because of the shadow DOF? I was shooting center-weighted, that might be it. Not sure what happened, guess I'll have to test this lens again some day. I shot from many different angles, including shooting down from a tree. Got fantastic photos. My advice of the day is; move around and shoot from different angles is key to a good photoshoot.

More pictures from the shoot can be found on my flickr site.