Groove Magazine: March Music Special

News:
Now that the issue is out and about, I'm happy to share the fun time I had shooting recently. I was out shooting (as were fellow Seoul Photo Club alumni Dylan Goldby, Shawn Parker, and Lee Smathers) for the March music special of Groove Magazine recently. As Shawn puts it, "[it's] quite possibly the most well-photographed issue of the mag, ever," and I ain't arguing with that.

A bit out of order, as my mind sometimes gets, this first shot (above) is from behind stage at Club Freebird in Hongdae, Seoul -- stop number 3. No strobes here. Just stage lighting. Got here for the last band, couldn't find the owner, and nobody could tell me the band's name. If you know who they are (if you are who they are), I'd love to shoot them (you) proper credit. They started out with a kind of smooth Coldplay vibe, and then songs took an interesting turn into pseduo metal balads... or something. I would have liked to listen to more, but time ran out. I was shooting three venues in one night. No time for love, Dr. Jones! This one ran on page 38 of Groove. It's one of my personal faves.

This is DJ Paul. He's a cool guy. He let me put all my gear inside the band room. He does DJ work on the side, but his main love is jammin' with his group -- Kachisan. I have yet to make it to one of his shows, but I'm excited to check out their sound and shoot some photos. You can also find him on Facebook at www.facebook.com/paulkhillier so stop by and show him some love!

Paul was mixing up some tunes to listen to during the band's break, so I popped on my trusty Canon 430 flash, aimed it at the wall of CDs to the left, and bounced it back at him in E-TTL mode while dragging the shutter a bit to mix the light. Turned out alright, IMHO. This was before I picked up some Flashwaves and went wireless. Setting everything up manually is great, but E-TTL is nice when you're working fast! Check it out on page 38. wo0t.

Freebird's small, but there's a lot of room to sit off to the right and a dance floor right in the front of the stage. It's dark inside, but it's cozy. The band room behind the stage is wicked cool. Overall, the place seems like a place I'd frequent back home -- small but still comfortable, dark but inviting, and with a balance of live bands and dance music. Cool.






This is on the main entrance floor in Club FF in Hongdae, Seoul -- stop number 1 that night. The stage and bar are downstairs where the sign is pointing, but I found a messy table off to the side and went wide with my lens (Canon 10mm-20mm at 10mm) to get a nice wide view of the place up here. The Rocktigers are in the background getting ready to go on stage after the Moonshiners finish up below. I shot this HDR (High Dynamic Range -- multiple exposures combined to provide more details in the highlights and shadows) image hand-held, as I do a lot of the time. However, it's even harder when you're shooting indoors at an average shutter speed around 3 seconds and at an ISO of 800. Yikes. Where was my tripod? This turned out better than expected and ran on page 38.

Here's a view downstairs inside Club FF in Hongdae, Seoul. My buddy, Dylan, assisted as my more than just my voice activated light stand, but more as my voice of reason. He really helped come up with some off camera lighting solutions that night. He was way off camera, top-left, amongst arm-to-arm fans, sweating his nether regions off in order to pop a bit of rim light into the crowd on this one. I'm sitting pretty back in the DJ / mixer booth. :) Ah. The joys of assisting.

I really have no idea what the settings finally were because we were ramping power up and down for different tests, but if I had to guess, it's probably around 1/32 power, bare. We worked out an intricate system of thumbs up for more power, thumbs down for less that we toyed with until I had enough to move on.

That place was hot and these guys were rockin' the place! I've been to FF when there was more room and it's quite comfy, but punk bands really know how to pack a place! And that's all fun and stuff... you know... when you're not there to work. Oi! You can find this one on pages 37.






This is the interior inside Club Ta in Hongdae shot from the round lifter area off to the left -- stop number 2 that night. I shot three long exposures and composited them into an HDR image -- thus the extreme ghosting of the patrons. Camera-left is the stage and off in the distance behind everything is the bar. TA has a really cool look, but as you're about to read... I guess it normally looks a lot different... or something. You can find this one on pages 36 & 37 in the magazine. I'm pretty happy with how the colors turned out.




Master photographer and lighting extraordinaire, Dylan Goldby, returned the favor and then some for this shoot. Low on supplies, he lent me his Nikon speedlight and Flashwaves trigger and put together a makeshift DIY snoot out of a band poster to help light this off-camera left. Power was at 1/32. Tests went on and on... but with a basically empty bar, you can mess around for a while without anyone in your way. Well, almost.

We had a bitch of a time trying to color-correct the flash without any gels (we tried a balloon, a glass of beer, and I think some CD cases), so I ended up double processing in post. Just took the blue cast off of the model; I thought it looked interesting and more theatrical splashing on to some of the background.

Here's a photo I snapped via timed-shutter to test out the snooted light:





I really like Club TA. It has a chill vibe going on inside. Although there was no band to enjoy that night, I couldn't help but notice the most excellent stage -- [inset any Bill & Ted movie line here]. There was a dude here, as there is many places from time to time, who made it his job to let me know all about the place, how long he has been frequenting it, all about his time in Korea, how he takes photographs too, and then how I wasn't photographing the club the way it really is.

I nodded, smiled, and swiftly booted him to the throat and went on with my business. I'm pretty happy with how I photographed it, with the solution Dylan came up with for light, and the overall look -- and most importantly, so was my client. Up yours TA snob-douche! You can find this one on page 37, too.

Thanks for checking these out. More to come... sooner this time... I hope! :)