The Blues...

From a fancy blue bottle of my earlier (yesterday's) to the Blues, proper, courtesy of The Smokin' Benny Brown Blues Band (see my Blip of 29.09), which just managed to dip into the early hours.

The difference being was the addition of a French ace harmonica player, Laurent Mouflier, now living in London. Looking later at his facebook CV, he was playing at Glastonbury, no less and it was easy to see and hear why. If you're wondering what else he has in his hands, apart from the harmonica, it's a special microphone that he cups against the instrument.

Having got to know the titular frontsman, both in vocals and guitarist, Benny, here in a very out focus background and bass player, Steve - who even managed to snap a string - they didn't repair it, they got a mate, also a bassist to nip up the road home to get his. Based in the Bournemouth area, they would have been in a pickle otherwise. Benny was telling me that they stumbled across Laurent when the band were playing in some of the more upmarket dives in London...!

Yes, took loads of ultrawides, including above their heads, holding camera right in front of the bass drum - as I said the band all know me - and I tended to go for these before the dancing really got going; just as well as I seemed to be often on my kness - people at tables and at the bar, do not want a 6'2" figure blocking their view all the time. It was a free event, but still...

So, to this, with the Nikkor G 85mm f1.8, almost open aperture, only cropped at the top, to remove some distracting lights. Now, when I say that the lighting was awful, it was just that - magenta and pink, plus a bit of pinkish magenta. Maybe a touch of mauve, at times, too. This reduces texture and facial features to zero, even when exposure is spot on.

Now, I hate flash, I resent flash and desist using it, especially when I am at the front and so close. On this basis, I took no flashgun. The only one I have now is a monster of a GN of 60, that'd illuminate Space, if I so wanted. So, never underestimate the tiny and pathetic (& amateurish) on-camera pop-up effort! No, you cannot control the angle but you can the amount, in relation to the main exposure. You have to remove all lenshoods (they can cause a shadow) and that you've enough battery juice - and as I only needed a bit of flash, not so much to illuminate the face but to change the colour temperature and thus allow skin texture and detail to come through.

The previous SBBB Blip mentioned, had the same lighting and I turned that to black & white, here I added a small amount of dark blue 'photo-filter' in Photoshop to make it look less - grey? and more akin to the music they were playing.