Eddie Money and his car

BimmerBob · November 15, 2008

Hi Everyone,

I did a photoshoot with Eddie Money with his Pontiac Solstice a few days ago for an online article about celebrities and their cars for Motortrend Online. I'm Eddie's business manager and not anything close to being a professional photographer. I used my Sony a100 with a Sigma 70-300 lens for top two shots and a Sigma 18-50 f2.8 lens for the bottom two shots.

Comments, critiques and suggestions are welcome. What do you think? Keep the day job?? :rofl

Bob

Long exposure night shots seem to be more of a challenge with a person in the shot, but he did a good job of standing still for about 15-20 seconds.

Eddie's a bit washed out in this one. I wasn't able to fix it in Aperture or PS

I zoomed out all the way intentionally to get the fisheye effect

ChatKat · November 15, 2008

Neighborhood...
I guess you're shooting in my neighborhood. I've met both Eddie (friend of a friend - years ago) and his son ( was working and making stops at one of my clients) just living in the area. Nice kid.

Third one is the best. There are so many great spots in the area to have taken these - even at night. Watch your backgrounds, use low DOF to blur it. If you need to reshoot, let me know. There are some really great backgrounds in WLV for this kind of image. (I do accounting work too)

iamprof40 · November 15, 2008

maybe keep the day job for now, but they are pretty good
very nice in fact

BimmerBob · November 15, 2008

ChatKat wrote:

I guess you're shooting in my neighborhood. I've met both Eddie (friend of a friend - years ago) and his son ( was working and making stops at one of my clients) just living in the area. Nice kid.

Third one is the best. There are so many great spots in the area to have taken these - even at night. Watch your backgrounds, use low DOF to blur it. If you need to reshoot, let me know. There are some really great backgrounds in WLV for this kind of image. (I do accounting work too)

Hi Chatkat,

Yup. That was at the Chevron (or was it Mobil) station off Ventu Park Road in TO. We took a few in parking lot that had some really brownish/yellow lights and I just couldn't get the color temperature right. Then I spotted the really white lighting at the gas station and figured it would be a good spot for some long exposure shots with plenty of cars driving by to get the white and red streaks.

Thanks for the tips. I don't think we'll need to re-shoot, but I'll take you up on it if Motortrend doesn't like these. I think they usually just put a couple of small (like 400px or less) pics in the article, so the writer was happy with these. Fortunately, her expectations were quite low.

Actually, were I could really use some tips is in shooting in concert situations. I've shot as his concerts a couple of times this year. He played here in Camarillo and it started during the day and played into the night. The daytime shots were easy, but after the sun went down the entire situation changed. The lighting changes constantly and everyone is moving, so it really made me appreciate a good concert photo. I have quite a few pics in the "photos from the road" page at eddiemoney.com. Here are a couple of the better pics from that show:

Eddie

Eddie's guitar player Tommy Girvin

Eddie daughter, Jesse. The guy in the blue shirt was really enjoying himself

Eddie's keyboard player, Chris Grove

Drummer Glenn Symmonds. I was using the Sigma 70-300 and got a very shallow DOF. Actually, I think I used the 70-300 for the entire show.

ront · November 16, 2008

Bob, I think that these are very good pics for the most part. I like the first and the forth one. Eddies face is overexposed some, but that can be dealt with.
As far as taking night pics at concerts, it is not an easy thing to do. As you said, the lighting changes so much. I am learning to do this and it really keeps you working. I also owned the A100, and it was not a great low light camera. It did suffer from noise issues in the higher ISO settings. I think you have done very well with these. I now have the A700 and I am very happy with it!

Ron

Skippy · November 16, 2008

BimmerBob wrote:

Hi Everyone,

I did a photoshoot with Eddie Money with his Pontiac Solstice a few days ago for an online article about celebrities and their cars for Motortrend Online. I'm Eddie's business manager and not anything close to being a professional photographer. I used my Sony a100 with a Sigma 70-300 lens for top two shots and a Sigma 18-50 f2.8 lens for the bottom two shots.

Comments, critiques and suggestions are welcome. What do you think? Keep the day job??

Bob

Long exposure night shots seem to be more of a challenge with a person in the shot, but he did a good job of standing still for about 15-20 seconds.

Eddie's a bit washed out in this one. I wasn't able to fix it in Aperture or PS

I zoomed out all the way intentionally to get the fisheye effect

Ohhhhhh dear, I have to confess I have no clue who Eddie Money is :oogle
I get the feeling I might be alone on this one, but I really don't know anything about him

You need to get yourself a tripod and cable release if you haven't already got one, and being Eddie's Business Manager you should be able to reshoot him and his car.

The Sony's are capable of very good night shots, maybe lack of experience on your part hasn't helped you with these.

I like your concerts shots better.
Good luck with a reshoot, get your book out and check out the section for taking Night Shots

.... Skippy

.

BimmerBob · November 16, 2008

Hi Ron

ront wrote:

Bob, I think that these are very good pics for the most part. I like the first and the forth one. Eddies face is overexposed some, but that can be dealt with.
As far as taking night pics at concerts, it is not an easy thing to do. As you said, the lighting changes so much. I am learning to do this and it really keeps you working. I also owned the A100, and it was not a great low light camera. It did suffer from noise issues in the higher ISO settings. I think you have done very well with these. I now have the A700 and I am very happy with it!

Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the input and the atta-boy. I have decided to upgrade to the A700. I do remember reading that the A100 was a pretty good first attempt in the DSLR market for Sony, but was a bit weak at high ISO settings.

These concert photos were my first attempt. The 2nd attempt wasn't as good. He had a concert at the Santa Barbara County fair in San Luis Obispo, CA. The entire concert was at night and the lights changed constantly. For example, I'd get the camera set and the shot framed on Eddie and then the guitar solo would come up and they turned the spotlight off on him and I ended up with a picture of Shadowman.

A lot of the pics came out underexposed or blurry. My inexperience made it difficult to find the right combo of shutter speed, aperture, etc. In retrospect, at my knowledge level maybe I should have just set the camera on auto and let it tell me what it thinks the settings should be. Is that a good technique to find a starting point?

What are your thoughts on the A700 compared to the A100?

Bob

BimmerBob · November 16, 2008

Eddie Who???

Skippy wrote:

Ohhhhhh dear, I have to confess I have no clue who Eddie Money is :oogle
I get the feeling I might be alone on this one, but I really don't know anything about him

You need to get yourself a tripod and cable release if you haven't already got one, and being Eddie's Business Manager you should be able to reshoot him and his car.

The Sony's are capable of very good night shots, maybe lack of experience on your part hasn't helped you with these.

I like your concerts shots better.
Good luck with a reshoot, get your book out and check out the section for taking Night Shots .... Skippy
.

Hi Skippy,

Well, being from OZ you're probably much less likely to be familiar with US recording artists from the 80s. Eddie has sold more than 37 million records in his 30+ year career. He broke with the hits Two Tickets to Paradise and Baby Hold On back in about 1978. Check out his site at www.eddiemoney.com and you can find all kinds of songs on iTunes.

It's unlikely we'll do a reshoot. After looking at some of the pictures used in their "celebrity drive" articles you can see here, it seems they have set the photography bar pretty low.

The writer even said that all we needed to do was snap some pics with our iPhones, so I think I've already exceeded her expectations. hehehehehehehe Even though the pics are good enough for Motortrend's purposes, I recognize I have room for improvement and I DO appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

Bob

ront · November 16, 2008

Hi Bob, I think that the A700 is light years ahead of the A100. That is not to knock the A100. I had a great time with that camera and it was a great starter camera for me. I am still pretty much a young'n in this whole photography thing, but I have been having a great time with it. Sony just released a Version 4 firmware upgrade for the A700 that really helped it out and breathed a lot of new life into it also. I think you would love the A700. It also just melts into your hand!! Here is a link to the concert pics that I have taken so far with the A700. The last concert (The Listening) I used the flash on most all of the concert and I wish that I would not have. Too late now, but it will give you some idea of how this works also. I did judt use the on boeard flash also.
http://www.ront.smugmug.com/Concerts

I have been a very big Eddie Money fan through the years. I think that "Life for the Taking" was my favorite cd of his. I wore that one out!!

Take care, Ron