Habitat for Insanity with The Rayons

The Rayons at J.J.'s Bohemia during Habitat for Insanity, a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity in Chattanooga.

By John O'Keefe-Odom

AgXphoto.info

Contact sheet review from the night before showed that the typical hot-shoe flash lighting plan wasn't going to provide the illumination we needed to fill out the photos. A lot of times, the trend in bar band photography will lead us to push for higher sensitivity (1600 ASA, plus), slower shutters, and faster apertures.

After reviewing a contact sheet of Ilford Delta 3200 developed at 6400 ASA in D-76 stock, I knew it was time to add another point of light. The subjects and venue were accommodating. To improve the lighting plan, I added an old strobe with a CTB gel on an optical relay, and put it on a lightstand about nine feet high (3 meters).

Even though there were many other cameras using flash in the audience, I had no noticeable problems with other people tripping the flash.

Preparations for installing the lightstand included a review of the exposure math. Careful attention to the optical relay's orientation was something I experimented with. I simplified the setup after a few trials, and chose a strait hard flash with gel and optical, pointed directly at the subject's area, from above.

All of those tests were done in a garage, before the event. Since I ran the tests, I was able to cut my kit bag of carried items down to only what I chose to use. I was able to install the lighting quickly and with confidence.

That night, I carried a Pentax K200D, a 645 55mm all manual lens with K mount adapter; my Vivitar 285HV gelled and corded up; a ligthstand with old strobe and optical relay, and my Pentax K1000 loaded with Ektachrome.

That's right: two cameras and one lens. I swapped and shared between them.

The night before, at another one of The Rayon's sets, I shot the test AgX with Pentax 645 and handheld single point flash.

During the trials after the first night's set shots, I had reviewed and discarded options for warmer gels in the background; split gels on my handheld Vivitar 285HV (I went with plain CTO instead); and the use of umbrellas and bounce. In the day before's setup, my highest failure rate had been in photos related to the use of bounce. In tighter interiors, usually backwards bounce does me well. This time, it was time to throw some hard light.

The blue rim light on Courtney's hair is from the CTB on lightstand, which happens to backlight her from this angle. The golden tones on the skin of the subjects are from light cast forward with a handheld Vivitar 285HV with 6' (2 meter) coiled PC cord between hot shoe to PC cord adapters. The gel on there was a full CTO (color temperature orange).

The pattern of closed eyes in the facial expressions of the singer and the audience made "closed eyes", something a lot of us want to avoid in photos, into a compositional technique to help tell the story. Here, we see the audience connecting with the singer.

High CTB backlighting for rim and general illumination; warm CTO thrown forward. A careful inspection of the drummer's face, on the left frame's edge, shows the interplay of the thrown blue and orange gels.

Drummer and bassist of The Rayons.

She's so shy. Courtney, lead singer for The Rayons, reaches deep inside, piercing her quiet, withdrawn exterior to get in touch with her feelings for a change.

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