Cultural photography from Asia | Craig Ferguson Images » Music

Top of the Pops

Craig — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 22:00:36 +0000

Both as a personal exercise in creativity and as a theme for a competition, putting together a series of photographs that are based on the song titles on a favorite album is a lot of fun. There are a number of ways you can go about it, so let’s look at a few. They all start with choosing or being assigned an album to use as your theme.

Spend a few hours shooting all images relating to the song titles.

Go through your archives and find differing images that relate to the titles.

In a group, divide the album up and shoot 2-3 “songs” each.

Shoot the album as a project spanning a few weeks.

Get really ambitious and try to work your way through Rolling Stone’s “Top 500 Albums” list.

For the examples here, I’ve chosen Pink Floyd’s 1973 album “The Dark Side of the Moon”. Images are after the jump.

Speak To Me - popular Taipei mayor Hau Long-bin makes a speech.

Breathe - Tai chi in a Taipei park.

On The Run - 42km (26 miles) of pain, a runner about to complete a marathon.

Time - Taichung HSR Station.

Great Gig in the Sky - Pingxi Sky Lanterns

Money - ghost money stacked in a Taiwanese temple.

Us and Them - Barbed wire barricades to keep protestors away.

Any Color You Like - Choosing fabric in Taipei.

Brain Damage - drink too much and that's what you might get

Eclipse

That was the 85th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.

Live Performance Portfolio

Craig — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 03:24:46 +0000

Portfolio – Live Performance – Images by Craig Ferguson

In The Pit – Basic Tips For The Concert Photographer

Craig — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 22:00:02 +0000

Taiwan indie singer Crowd Lu on stage. Lu won Best New Artist and Best Composer at the 2009 Golden Melody Awards in Taipei.

You have three songs. Sometimes two. No control over the lighting. So how do you get great shots during a live concert? Start out with your camera set to RAW, meter set to spot and white balance on auto and a fairly high ISO.

Before we continue, professional photographers as well as those who aspire to be shouldn’t miss out on portfolio consultant Selina Maitreya and her audio series The View From Here. It’s available at a 50% discount using the code FOSCFI.

As you take your place in the photo pit, shoot a quick test shot. Spot meter the singer’s/guitarist’s face and shoot a test exposure based on that. Check the LCD screen image and histogram, watching out for blown highlights in the important areas (and what’s important will largely be up to you). Adjust as necessary, and lock the settings in. Shooting manual is easiest for consistency. As the stage lighting changes, make any adjustments necessary. Something like f2.8 and 1/250 is a good combination to start from.
That’ll keep you covered for your basic exposure. You’re going to want to decide on some settings in the first few seconds of your allotted three songs and try to avoid changing them too much. Each second spent changing settings is one less second shooting, and when you’re only in the pit for ten minutes, every second counts. When you do need to change settings, you need to know how to do it quickly. The photo pit is not the place to discover that the new model of camera you’re using has it’s ISO button in a different place than the old model. It is essential that you can change settings on the fly, without needing to look for the correct button. Practice at home in a dark room or with a blindfold first. Know exactly where each button is, and how to adjust be feel only. Decide on whether you want to set your camera to change in full stops, ½ stops or 1/3 stops and make this consistent with all your bodies.

View of the crowd from the side of the photo pit at an Oasis concert.

Shoot a lot. Make sure you have plenty of memory cards and also that they are all preformatted and ready to go. Ensure that spare cards are easily accessible – you don’t have time to search through your bag to find a new card. I use a Black Rapid RS-5 strap that has a useful pocket that I can store spare cards in. I know exactly where they are and can pull them out instantly when necessary.

I’ll look at composition tips, dealing with stage lights and more in a future post.

That was the 55th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.

Slideshows

Craig — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 22:00:13 +0000

Music | Diplo – Images by Craig Ferguson

When I was about 5 or 6 years old, my grandparents took a trip to Britain. I remember they came back with lots of slides and it became a regular feature of trips to their place during school holidays and so forth to have a slide show. Even though I’d seen the photos numerous times, as a kid I was always keen to see them again.

Slideshows these days have evolved and we can now easily see them online everywhere, from news media to blogs, travel sites to You Tube. Putting them together can be as simple or as difficult as you like.

At the most basic level, a slideshow is a series of pictures automatically progressing to the next. From there you can move onto features such as adding transitions, captions, fades, animation, voiceovers and music. If you decide to add music to a slideshow, so remember to respect copyright â€“ I have seen a lot of slideshows by both amateur and professional photographers that essentially contain pirated music.

The slideshow with this post is served automatically from my portfolio archive hosted at Photoshelter. Quick slideshows can be easily put together in Lightroom. In the past, I’ve used software such as Slideshow Pro, Proshow Gold, iMovie, Windows Moviemaker and more. There are plenty of other options available as well.

So give it a try. Select a series of photos, create a slideshow, share it via YouTube or Vimeo and share it with your friends.

That was the 36th Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by subscribing to my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.

Shoot the Audience

cfimages — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 22:00:37 +0000

Shoot the audience.

As someone who makes part of my income from shooting live music I notice that one of the most common requests I get from bands and promoters is for crowd shots. In many ways, it’s in the audience that the popularity of a band and the quality of their music is most apparent.

I’m a person who loves almost all forms of music, has thousands of LP’s, CD’s and MP3 albums; and has been regularly supporting live music and DJs for close on two decades. Nothing is more disappointing to me than a crowd that doesn’t react to the guys on stage. Therefore, as a photographer, I always make sure I have one eye on the crowd in order to capture their reactions when a favorite song is played, a DJ drops a beat or a lead guitarist launches into a solo.

Quite often, the crowd are going to be moving as much as, if not more than, the band. You want to make sure you have a shutter speed fast enough to freeze that movement. In a dark club, that’s often not possible, so a flash bounced off the ceiling can work wonders.

Here in Taipei, most venues have an open camera policy. We don’t really get many international touring bands here which do have photo restrictions, so it’s quite easy for most people to take a camera along and get some photos. For those of you who don’t have the advantage of open camera policy in your local live venues, you might be able to go out on a quiet night midweek and be able to take a camera with you, or you could make friends with someone in a band and have them okay it with the club management. No matter which approach you take, make sure you turn your camera on the crowd for a change.

That was number thirteen in Daily PhotoTip. If this post was useful to you, why don’t you subscribe to my feed, leave a comment and share it with your friends. You can also get access to exclusive content and special offers by joining my newsletter. Sign up today. Thank you.

Back to the Circus – The Deadly Vibes

cfimages — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 22:00:04 +0000

Rock n roll band The Deadly Vibes open the Rock N Roll Circus at VU Livehouse, Ximending, Taipei, Taiwan.

This past weekend saw Taiwan’s favorite dirty rock and roll band The Deadly Vibes bring the RockNRoll Circus back to town. With two shows, one on Friday in Taichung and one on Saturday in Taipei, it was a much anticipated event. They got me in to shoot their set at the VU Livehouse in Ximending on Saturday and it was the usual down and dirty, gritty rock that they are renowned for. Words can’t really explain what they’re like but maybe a few pictures can. If you’re not familiar with them, check them out at their Myspace link above. The images were all shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, 17-40mm f4L lens and a 580exII speedlight equipped with a Honl 1/4″ gridspot.

Rock n roll band The Deadly Vibes open the Rock N Roll Circus at VU Livehouse, Ximending, Taipei, Taiwan.

Five For Friday – MoneyShot Horns

cfimages — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:00:07 +0000

This weekend is set to be a busy one in the enetertainment sphere here in Taiwan, with the Rock N Roll Circus taking place on Friday in Taichung and Saturday in Taipei, as well as Yo La Tengo performing on Saturday. So with that in mind, this weeks 5 is taken from a gig I shot for the Money Shot Horns a couple of weeks ago at the America Club’s annual ball.

Before we get into that though, it’s time to announce two winners from the Creativity giveaway from a couple of weeks ago. Valerie Ardini and Gareth H Photography are the winners and both will be receiving the prize pack. I’ll be in touch with you by email with more details. Congratulations.

On another note, this will be the penultimate edition of 5. I’ve got something fresh and exciting coming up for 2010, so stay tuned for that. Also, for those on Twitter, don’t forget to check out the new mentoring initiative, Togmentor. Now however, without further ado, the Money Shot Horns.

MoneyShot Horns live at The America Club, Taipei, Taiwan.

Back To Music

cfimages — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 22:00:20 +0000

Headed out on the weekend to see a couple of friends’ bands. One of them, New Hong Kong Hair City, I’ve seen before, the other, The Green Machine, a side project for JT from The Deadly Vibes, were playing their first show. I wasn’t really out there with the intention of shooting the music, but I did take a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a 70-200mm lens and grab a handful of shots. You can see a few after the jump.

Before we get into the photos though, let me remind you that I’m giving some stuff away at the moment. I have copies of Steven Pressfield’s The War of Art, a must read book for any creative person, as well as my Renegade Beauty | Taiwan 2010 to give away to some lucky people. All you have to do is head over to this post entitled Turning Tides of Creativity and leave a comment on what creativity means to you. This giveaway is open to everyone, anywhere in the world.

The Green Machine @ Roxy Roots, Taipei

New Hong Kong Hair City @ Roxy Roots, Taipei

A Moving Sound

cfimages — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 22:00:09 +0000

Described by National Geographic’s Tom Pryor as “one of the most original outfits working in the world music arena today”, local multi-cultural performance group A Moving Sound released their third CD, Starshine, last weekend with two concerts at the Red Theater, in Ximending, Taipei. Fresh from a recent tour of Europe, Starshine explores the souls journey through life and the concept of reincarnation, as well as venturing into ideas influenced from Taiwan and China.

Here is a series of images taken from their release performance. If you ever get the chance to see them, I highly recommend it. All images were shot on a Canon 5D Mark II and a Canon 40D with either 17-40mm or 70-200mm lenses.

A Moving Sound

Five For Friday – Spacefunk

cfimages — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:00:54 +0000

What a week it has been. First page on Digg, and now the front page of Google when searching for people photography. Quite a ride. Things are getting back to normal now and so it’s time for another installment in 5. Regular visitors will be familiar with Spacefunk, who I previously photographed live at Bliss and at VU Livehouse. I met up with the four of them last week to do some promo shots for their upcoming shows and CD. Here are five photos from the shoot. Shooting details and some more info about the band is after the images.

Spacefunk is made up of Claire Juan on vocals, Viba on keys, Justin Lewis on bass and Kyle Bajcer on drums. I highly recommend taking a look at their website and checking out some of their upcoming shows, dates for which are :

May 23 – Tone 56, Taipei

May 30 – River Bash, Pinglin

Jun 19 – Taipei

Jun 20 – Taipei

Jun 27 – Taipei

Jul 04 – Taichung

Shooting details – all were shot with the Canon 5D mk II and either a 70-200mm or 17-40mm lens. Lighting was a single speedlight into a shoot-thru umbrella triggered by Elinchrom Skyports.

Coming up next Monday is a tutorial post on travel photography. Don’t miss it.