Third Time, But With Less Light

I recently had my first three-peat for Kerrang Magazine. It’s the third time I’ve been assigned to photograph innerpartysystem.

The first two shoots were portraits (see them here and here), but this time I went on the road with them to do a day-in-the-life type shoot.

We started in New York City where the guys had interviews at MTV and FUSE. Then it was five hours or so in the van to Boston. It was snug in there, but they were nice enough to make room for the writer and me.

The most interesting photos I made were taken as the guys loaded their gear into the club in Boston. There was a narrow alley that led to the back door and it was lit by a single flood light. It created a long shadow so I shot a bunch of frames as they came in and out of the doorway.

This isn’t one of the images I sent to the magazine because the guy in the back is the writer. But I like the mysterious feel of it and the flare coming over the lead singer’s shoulder.

I shot it using available light with the Nikon D3 and the 14-24 mm lens. I cranked my ISO to 3200, dropped my shutter to 1/30 and opened my aperture up to 2.8. There’s enough light bouncing around off the walls so I still get a little bit of fill on their faces.

The band travels with lights for the back of the stage, but none for the front. Club lighting is traditionally horrible, so this created another back lit situation. In this case, I decided to pop in a little bit of fill flash to compensate.

We were all pretty tired at the end of the day, but we managed to make it to our hotel in Boston. As I checked in, two of the guys were still passed out in the van.

I’m not sure if they left them there or not.

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