You know, when you love a person, a place, a thing, and you have a camera, there is no such thing as too many photos. The emotion of the experience comes back when you review them.
As a photographer you have to improve, calibrate your “eye”, and only keep what you want to define as art, or your work that represents you. Though when you fall in love, you keep everything. So are the photos I took at The Outta Space tonight. Yet, I cannot show everything in this blog. I need to keep to my rigid (okay, don’t laugh) selection of photos to show you. I can keep the others for myself.
I really love the high ceiling of The Outta Space. Every detail has been taken care of, which includes the bare wood ceiling and painted roof truss.
I was enamored by these chairs . . .
Lou Shields knows I like to taking photographs, so he puts up with me when I point the camera at him like this. Sunset was taking place through the rolling garage door windows, giving enough rim lighting to make it interesting. I have to say, I enjoy having starting out using a fully manual 35mm SLR camera. If you have a camera with a good built in light meter, as mine was, you could set it on the fly while looking through the lens and get the photograph you wanted.
I really love the high ceiling of The Outta Space. Every detail has been taken care of, which includes the bare wood ceiling and painted roof truss.
For many reasons The Outta Space reminds me of the "Jetsons" show I watched when I was young. The colors, the curves, the uniqueness, the desire to make things easy. A very nice place to kick back to relax and enjoy local written music and to listen to local musicians.
Look at the care taken to give you a great experience. Colors, art, space, tables arranged for best viewing of the stage, and all of the chairs facing the stage.
Lou Shields knows I like to taking photographs, so he puts up with me when I point the camera at him like this. Sunset was taking place through the rolling garage door windows, giving enough rim lighting to make it interesting. I have to say, I enjoy having starting out using a fully manual 35mm SLR camera. If you have a camera with a good built in light meter, as mine was, you could set it on the fly while looking through the lens and get the photograph you wanted.
These days, I am finding more and more just to be happy to have my camera set in a general fashion, then to photograph, look at the preview and the subject, and adjust and shoot again to the way I feel and to what I was looking for. This is what happened in the next two photographs of Lou.
I could have metered and tried to get it right the first time, however the technical thinking behind it takes away from the emotion of taking the photograph for me. So I take the photo, then quickly change my settings to get to what I want. The second photo here, and the second photo I took, is hitting it in my “eye”. Though I found this first photograph interesting as well and wanted to share.
Opening the evenings set of music was Christine Melody. Christine has a very warming stage presence, and a voice to match. The smoothness of her vocal reminded me a little of Melissa Ethridge, Natalie Merchant, Natasha Bedingfield, or Paula Cole going on. I am interested in watching her grow musically as she perfects her voice as Christine.
Christine's beautiful parents, full of love. It is nice when you have support, having that safety net of mom and dad as you strive for success.
Jamie, very cool, a great stage presence and play. Cara, a voice that is unique, powerful, controlling, and you want more. I ended up kicking back to enjoy this, hence, not too many photographs taken.
Venue lighting, it can challenge you when taking photographs when it changes. If there is a specific color of light you like, you sit, wait for the color cycle to come back, and photograph. Or, photograph a little of all, as in this next two photographs.
Then as you go through edit, you choose, or like me at times choose too much and do to much. The next couple are edits of the photograph that led this blog.
Some photographs are striking. Some subjects are striking. When you combine the two, as I have with a man and his banjo, tuning it because his art depends on it, then you have captured it all, as in this next photograph with no editing.
You cannot help but love Lou. He is the kind of person that when you meet him, you are at ease. You would invite him to supper after the first few minutes of conversation. He is honest, hardworking, and very grateful.
You can tell by a photograph when a man is getting down with his banjo, as in this next photograph.
As a photographer, it is difficult at times to decide how to set “white balance”, which is how the camera will interpret the colors against a camera standard gray card. Most of what I photograph I seem to do in “automatic white balance”, even when the lighting is changing, because it can result in some cool effect. (My goal, try to do as much with “in camera” settings so as not to spend a lot of time in post editing of the photographs.) Yet, when you select auto, you do get some randomness in the camera sensor stability as I have presented in these photographs, pretty much taken with the same camera settings. Why do I write all of this? For myself mostly. I do it to maintain my understanding of my art. You are enjoying my blogs and photographs because of it, which makes this photographer unique, as every individual is unique. Keep enjoying my work for I enjoy doing it.
Christine Melody
Opening the evenings set of music was Christine Melody. Christine has a very warming stage presence, and a voice to match. The smoothness of her vocal reminded me a little of Melissa Ethridge, Natalie Merchant, Natasha Bedingfield, or Paula Cole going on. I am interested in watching her grow musically as she perfects her voice as Christine.
Cara Dunning w/ Jamie Berthiaume
Lou Shields
Of course editing goes much deeper than what I do, as my bride Christi does. I need to grow more in that direction.
Some photographs are striking. Some subjects are striking. When you combine the two, as I have with a man and his banjo, tuning it because his art depends on it, then you have captured it all, as in this next photograph with no editing.
You cannot help but love Lou. He is the kind of person that when you meet him, you are at ease. You would invite him to supper after the first few minutes of conversation. He is honest, hardworking, and very grateful.
I do want to go back to The Outta Space next time with my bride Christi. I want to share what I believe is a beautiful experience with her. I hope you take time to check them out too.
Thanks to The Outta Space for such a wonderful venue. You can find out more about them here:
The Outta Space
6840 32nd St.
Berwyn, IL 60402
Our artists for this evening:
Lou Shields
Cara Dunning
w/ Jamie Berthiaume
Facebook (Cara)
Facebook (Jamie)
Christine Melody
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