Silver light

This is one of my definite live favorites of 2014. The punk band Silver played an amazing gig at the best venue in town, Garage. The lights were pretty good, so I got a lot of decent shots, but this one really stands out in my opinion. It is also the only one shot with a flash. Garage is a venue I’ve shot at hundreds of times, so whenever anybody jumps out into the crowd, I know there’s not enough light to get anything at all without a flash. Usually, I would use a tungsten gel on the flash, but since I wasn’t expecting to use the flash at all, I hadn’t prepared any gels. When the vocalist jumped into the crow, I quickly changed to the 16-35mm lens and grabbed a flash, connecting it as I ran from the photo pit after him into the crowd. I had the flash set to E-TTL mode and pointed it at the ceiling, slightly tilted back and to the right.

Use the slider to see before and after

RAW Conversion

In photoshop

EXIF: Canon 5D Mark III with Canon 16-35mm f/2.8 and Canon Speedlite 580EX II at 16mm, ISO 5000, f/2.8, 1/160 sec. and E-TTL 0 EV

Post

In post, I did my usual RAW conversion (you can see exactly what I above), then burned a bit in the shadows and added some unsharp mask (my “standard” setting are: Amount: 52, Radius 3.2, Threshold 0).

To see the full gallery from this concert, click here.