Hey all! This post is going to be all about a studio shoot that I did recently for one of my favorite clients, Throckmore! Winter is not always the best band photo season as a lot of the outdoor gigs don’t happen because it’s cold and I think most bands use the season to work on personal projects and don’t perform as often. That or I just didn’t hear much about gigs. What do I know, I am not really a musician. I got a call about a month ago to start setting up a shoot for Throckmore as they had done some switch up’s with band members and wanted some good headshots and general studio work. Between schedules we finally got together during one of their usual rehearsal dates and I broke out the portable studio to set up in a garage to get to work.
The one major downside to my portable studio is my backdrops. To make it easier to transport, my backdrops are all cloth and usually pretty small. I have two large sheets in both white and green for larger spaces, but it’s still not ideal for big groups. The smaller backdrops of Black, gray, and starfield are around 8×10 and great for headshots, but when you start adding in multiple people to the mix, it gets crowded. We did the best we could and still managed to pull off some great shots though.
Another big gotcha when shooting band members is the attire that most bands tend to wear. Well, maybe not most bands, but I have found that Rock bands love their black clothing. Of course, what is the most popular backdrop for a rock band? Black! In order for the clothing to not get blended into the backdrop I had to do some creative lighting.
My portable studio is made up of the following elements:
- 2x HPUSN LED Softbox Lighting stands
- 1x Backdrop frame that can extend out to about 12ft wide and 9ft tall
- 2x VIJIM VL120 RGB Video Lights
The HPUSN LED’s are great for keeping the whole area lit with the softbox covers diffusing the area but I needed a way to keep the backdrop lit up and different from the subject I am shooting. That’s where the smaller VIJIM’s came in. By placing them on the ground just behind the subject, facing up, they were able to illuminate the background and provide enough contrast that clothing on the Band members wouldn’t bleed into the background.
We soon switched up our background for the white sheet to accommodate more people and allow us to do some creative background swaps in post processing. I am sure there is someone out there that would say “But didn’t you say you had a big green screen?!?” Well, yes I do, but when working with still photography, chroma key background swapping is problematic as you tend to get a green “halo” effect from the lighting. For non-video shoots, white is actually WAY better for background removal.
I moved the smaller VIJIM lights up to highlight the subject from underneath and got some great portraits before we moved on to the group. This is where I will freely admit that I committed a cardinal sin among photographers in that I didn’t swap my lens or check my F-stop when I went to the group shots. While the initial photos looked great from a framing and pose standpoint when reviewing on the back screen, when I went to process them I recognized my mistake instantly (and had a lot of regrets). So a reminder to you all… CHECK YOUR F-STOPS!
As a result, some of those group shots had the person in the front perfect and clear, but those standing just enough behind them were just slightly out of focus. You may be asking, “Why would you even post about your screw up?” Well, this is more of a reminder to myself that I need to be held accountable, and a lesson that even the best of us (or the average of us) can make mistakes.
Regardless of the technical issues, we still got some great shots.
As an added bonus I got to test out some new tech that I will be writing up a review on soon. I picked up the new Meta Ray-Ban glasses to let me do some “behind the scenes” videos and photos. They are still new to me and I am finding my “vision” with them so a full review will come out later on. I did manage to piece together a great little montage of clips using them though.