Shots from Concert!!!

zoinkz

Took my first shots at a concert please let me know how to do better... thank you in advance.....

craig_d

Was there actually a pinkish/purplish light on him, or is your white balance off?

I would be inclined to use a much shallower DOF (wider aperture) than you have here, to isolate the performer from the background.

The shadowed microphone stand (or whatever it is) that sticks out in front of the guitar in the first shot is unfortunate, as is the edge of the keyboard that intrudes on his upper thigh in the second shot.

Other than that, these pictures are okay, but not terribly exciting. Partly this is simply due to your location, which you may not have had any control over. Part of it also is his poses and facial expressions, which don't communicate much beyond general pleasantness. He doesn't look at all intense or passionate in these pictures. That may be his personality or it could be you just didn't catch the best moments. I don't know who this guy is, so I have no opinion about that.

zoinkz

Color cast

craig_d wrote:

Was there actually a pinkish/purplish light on him, or is your white balance off?

I would be inclined to use a much shallower DOF (wider aperture) than you have here, to isolate the performer from the background.

The shadowed microphone stand (or whatever it is) that sticks out in front of the guitar in the first shot is unfortunate, as is the edge of the keyboard that intrudes on his upper thigh in the second shot.

Other than that, these pictures are okay, but not terribly exciting. Partly this is simply due to your location, which you may not have had any control over. Part of it also is his poses and facial expressions, which don't communicate much beyond general pleasantness. He doesn't look at all intense or passionate in these pictures. That may be his personality or it could be you just didn't catch the best moments. I don't know who this guy is, so I have no opinion about that.

The color is due to lights that are right above the stage. There were several different lights so if a performer moved least little bit they were in a different color.

I could have gone with a lower aperture though. I will give that a try next time.

Thanks for looking and for your comments.

divamum

You can play with the wb/colour casts a little (although IMO it goes against the grain to remove them completely, since they're part of the ambience) - if you have LR, one thing to do is play with the slider which is the predominant colour in the light to reduce it slightly, then look to find a WB closer to the natural skin tone. You'd be surprised how much more like what your eye saw that will look. Also, moving the skin tone towards a natural WB also seems to improve exposure, and results in less noise when you do lift exposure/brightness.

I would also crop out that little bit of ceiling on the UL corner in the first one - it grabbed my eye before the performer.

Nice job for a first time out in tricky light

zoinkz

divamum wrote:

You can play with the wb/colour casts a little (although IMO it goes against the grain to remove them completely, since they're part of the ambience) - if you have LR, one thing to do is play with the slider which is the predominant colour in the light to reduce it slightly, then look to find a WB closer to the natural skin tone. You'd be surprised how much more like what your eye saw that will look. Also, moving the skin tone towards a natural WB also seems to improve exposure, and results in less noise when you do lift exposure/brightness.

I would also crop out that little bit of ceiling on the UL corner in the first one - it grabbed my eye before the performer.

Nice job for a first time out in tricky light

Thank you very much for your input I do use light room and will try that just as soon as I get back to the Office.

again thank you for your suggestion.

thomasjm

zoinkz wrote:

Thank you very much for your input I do use light room and will try that just as soon as I get back to the Office.

again thank you for your suggestion.

There may have been a redish or pinkish light on the musician as there typically is with concerts like this, but i agree with the previous poster that your white balance is off. Go into adobe camera raw and at least open up one of the photos and click on his pocket with the white balance eye dropper. I bet it will get rid of the redish pinkish cast, and make the photo pop a little more.

Toshido

On that first photo. Another option to deal with the bright ceiling (?) in the top left corner is to use an adjustment brush and simply decrease exposure and.or brightness to reduce it to pure black and make it vanish into the black background.
I use the exposure brush like that as an eraser on black backgrounds

zoinkz

Here are a couple of the shots after taking in some of your great advice... hope you find these better.






thank you for all of your comments!