Category Archives: Concert

#10 – Voltaire Concert

Picking the first 17 wasn’t too hard, but getting down to ten was painful. There were a couple of images that vied for #10, but I selected this one.

Kind of funny that one of the top 10 wasn’t even a model photography picture. Instead, it was a concert image. So why did I pick it?

Because it captured the moment so well. It was a concert and Votaire is pretty comical and satiric. He had a couple of fans up on stage singing the song with him and I shot the horizontal image. Of course what made it was someone lifting a glass in the foreground. Just added the feeling the image needed.

Favorite Image #10 Voltaire Concert

The Rest Of the Band

Ok, while I admit to a glandular and artistic preference for the female of the species, neither are the reason I have so few pictures of the other members of the band.

The real reason is they were out of the light. Most of the light was on the center of the stage and both Gregor Kitzis on Violin and Glenn Sorino on Drums were out of the light. It was really bad for Glenn as the drums were almost totally in the dark.

Erica Mulkey on Cello

I don’t think this would be a very good Glamour Apprentice series if there were no pretty girls. Both of the female members of the Skeletal Orchestra qualify so they each get there own day.

Erica Mulkey was the Celloist for the band and very photogenic. I wish I had a image for the expression she had during a number of the songs. I don’t even know how to describe it. Sort of a disinterested half-smile. It was really awesome.

When I uploaded all the concert images to Flickr, I discovered Erica already had a presence there and found a really spectacular head shot of her you can see here.

Voltaire & The Skeletal Orchestra

Voltaire

I shot the Voltaire and the Skeletal Orchestra show here in Houston last week. This is something different for me. I normally shoot in the studio where I control everything, but I’ve been trying to branch out.

I’m friends with the guy who brought them to town, Marc from Seraphemera. I’d had the chance to shoot Voltaire last time he was in town, but wasn’t as pleased with how the images turned out.

I’m pretty happy with these.

I shot the opening band using some flash, but those images just look flat. So by the time Voltaire got on stage, I had cranked the ISO up to 800 and just shot with the stage lights.

My Fuji S3 impressed me again with the quality of its high ISO. I realize that new cameras go up to 64000, but the S3 is over a generation ago where high ISO was a no-no on digital.

I’d also rented the Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR lens and got some great images as a result. I love this lens and will probably buy it soon. It truly serves the art.

I normally shoot on manual, but things were changing too fast for that. I started out with Aperture Priority because I like to control the DOF, but even with a VR lens, there was too much shake. So I ended up shoot mostly with Shutter Priority.