Another from the Jazz Fest

...and finally, from The Steve Tucker All Star Jazz Band...

One of the trumpeters

I love his paisley pattern tie :)

Stumble It!

The Kingsize Five cont'd...

Continuing with the pile, this is the last shot I got of the band.

Singers

I wanted to capture some of the exuberance and energy they displayed on stage and hopefully that's what I managed. The blurry hands of the girls work well for this, but the bloke was moving right-to-left just too quickly to freeze his features.

Maybe next time I'll remember to set the drive mode to continuous shooting to stand more of a chance in getting the shot that works best.

Comments / hints / tips gratefully received

Stumble It!

Going through a bunch of unprocessed photos

I've been going through the pile of unprocessed photos in my digital darkroom. You know, the pile that builds up of the ones that haven't yet inspired you — while more recent ones have and have been dealt with.

Always a danger when you're doing this, though, that your "that's worthy" filter gets fooled — and I think mine has here! ;)

What do you think? More worthy for the recycle bin or...

Barbican Jazz and Blues Festival

This one came from a brief shoot at the Barbican International Jazz and Blues Festival and shows (some of!) the Kingsize Five brass section.

This was the closing session and marked the end of a great ten days of jazz and blues music from all round the world.

Stumble It!

One more from the jazz & blues fest

Sylvia's hair and feather clip looked stunning. I wanted to make a candid shot so didn't want to draw attention to myself - a long lens came to the rescue.

I hope I've done her and the shot justice :)

Feather Fascinators are chic

I had no idea what those feather things were called until I did some searching on the web.

Why am I not surprised to find that feathers are the new chic for Spring 09? Trust our continental friend to show the way!

Anyway, I made the shot of the natural pose I wanted, showing off those cascading, glorious brunette locks and the beautiful feathers she had chosen.

In the digital darkroom

The bw conversion

I was fairly careful in the treatment of this shot. Sylvia was wearing a red coat and the bw conversion I needed to use for the rest of the shot was making the red too dark -- as processing continued I was losing the shape and texture of that area.

There are a few ways to deal with this. Before conversion you can change the red hues of that area to something that works best when using the settings needed for the rest.

Alternatively, if you're too far down your processing when it becomes obvious this is the case, as I was, you can select the offending area with the lasso and a smallish feathering, and then change the saturation (using a saturation layer) of the range of colours that need it (within the selection). Fine tune the result by backing off the opacity of the layer.

Other tweaks

I did the usual slight contrast adjustment using curves, a nudge on the levels and a soft-light vignette.

Dodging and burning

I created a duplicate of the background layer to do some dodging (lightning) of the highlights. When I was happy that I'd done justice to the hair and the feathers, dodge-wise, I copied that layer so I could do the burning (darkening) on the new layer. That way, if I messed up the burning, I'd be able to delete just that layer and not lose the previous one where I did the dodging.

I burnt the mid-tones, often in the areas where the dodging had brought the mid-tones too close to the highlights, providing richer tones for those areas.

Finishing Touches

As part of the conversion to jpg, in preparation for web upload, I flattened all my layers, used a tad of unsharp mask and gave the contrast a very slight boost using a little known technique for contrast on the macro scale. (A tip I'll write up on another day.)

Stumble It!

Some more photos from the Barbican International Jazz & Blues Festival

I've been working away in the digital darkroom today and have completed another couple of shots from the festival, with maybe three left to do.

Dad's Girl

A proud dad and his little girl wandered past while I was working on some stage shots.

I was desperately trying to keep my ISO at 100 and hoped the image stabilisation of my lens would help freeze things. Unfortunately no, so many of my shots were just too blurred to use.

Even so, this one didn't suffer too much and had enough redeeming features to make it worthwhile taking through my workflow.

I converted from RAW, reducing the exposure by a tad to try to recover some of the detail in her back-lit hair. I gave it my normal amount of capture sharpening, using a free Photoshop sharpening action set from The Light is Right, and with a tiny tweak to levels and curves for contrast, it was pretty much done.

With a slight vignette and a final bit of sharpening via the unsharp mask the image was done.

A bowler hat bobbing around

Cindy, a good friend who's quite tall, was drinking up the festival music and couldn't keep her feet still. Here she is in front of the stage on the last day.

As I moved around looking for shots, whenever I looked back towards the stage, all I could see floating above and between people's heads was her bright-coloured bowler hat.

I tried to make a candid capture of her obvious enjoyment and hopefully this fits the bill. I did have to make a fairly heavy crop first but pretty much processed it in the digi darkroom as the one above.

As usual, comments / questions are welcome.

Stumble It!

First bw shots from the Jazz & Blues festival finale

We were blessed with great weather yesterday and I spent the afternoon at the grand finalé day of the International Barbican Jazz and Blues Festival.

Of course, I had my camera with me but regular readers will know that my style doesn't really cover photo journalism, I'm more into the art side. So here's me attempting something in between. More photos to post later, when I get the chance.

The Kingsize Five

Two of the members of this well-known swing band for the 21st century:

"Stomps like a super charged cabaret horn section. When they really let rip, as in potty mouthed Glen Miller pastiche Big Sis Little Sis, they hit home with bawdy theatrical panache" Thomas H Green, Q Magazine

"A manic mix of rocking blues and jazzy, dirty swing delivered with riffed up panache" Molloy Woodcraft, The Observer

I can confirm they lived up to their reputation and packed the plaza in between The Parade and Quay Road with onlookers, swayers, stompers and dancing couples. Rip-roaring entertainment indeed.

The Steve Tucker All Star Jazz Band

Their style of music ranges from popular swing jazz and romantic ballads to New Orleans classics and we had lots of couples whirling and jigging away. The photo shows Steve sawing away at his double bass.

"The Steve Tucker All Star Jazz Band brings breathtaking fresh life to the jazz classics of the era. The melodic, versatile voice of Steve is underpinned by the dynamic energy, passion and sensitivity of a very experienced front line combining with the powerful, driving, tight, swinging rhythm section." The North Devon Journal

They played in the National Marine Aquarium plaza, a great venue when the sun is shinning, as it did for them.

Stumble It!

Saturday at the International Barbican Jazz and Blues Festival

What a great day I had at the festival but for some reason I couldn't get inspired with my camera. I did make one keeper capture -- Benny "Guitar" Carr.

His style is Slip-slidin' blues with a twist of rock'n'roll -- a bottleneck specialist. He was playing in the piazza outside the National Marine Aquarium, accompanied by his brother, Tom, on bass git-fiddle.

Plenty more chances to see and hear the jazz and blues - it doesn't finish until 10th May. See the full itinerary at the International Barbican Jazz and Blues Festival site.

Stumble It!

Barbican International Jazz and Blues Festival

More photos from the Barbican International Jazz and Blues Festival - the Paul Harris Trio (5th) and Diz Watson (7th).

Stumble It!

Yesterday's photojournalism shots

Here are the first shots out the ddr from the opening day of the Barbican International Jazz and Blues Festival. First up we have Louise Parker, followed by a brass band.

Stumble It!