Trust your gut and bring your camera!

So on 03/08/2009 - yesterday as far as this blog date - I had one of those moments where my gut told me I need to go somewhere and I need to bring my camera. As per my usual self I had no idea what was going on concert wise in the city, and no idea that Wynton Marsalis was in town for a few concert dates.

The only thing I did know was that I was semi bored, and my gut told me to head down to the Dakota jazz club, and have a beer while watching their usual late night jazz on Fridays and Saturdays.

What turned out to happen was that Mr Marsalis got done with a concert across the street and subsequently came over to play a set for us at the Dakota... Now again, me being me only knew who he was when I looked up, saw a great trumpet player on stage, and then heard murmers of who it was.

Anyway, the night was a blast, I got a few images of it with my Nikon FG, and they turned out pretty cool. I was polite, didn't try and get close, and didn't try and shoot more than a few pictures. People weren't there to see me up front with my camera, and I wasn't there to do that - I was there to enjoy the music, have a few drinks, and (after Wynton came over) see something really special, in a very small venue.

When a model asks if you have any fans...

So I was doing a shoot with a few friends, and she wondered if we had any fans in the studio - something about blowing her hair around. Now don't get me wrong, I like this idea, but you really do need large fans that move a large volume of air around, not just any household one will work that well.

Since we're cheap at the studio sometime, we just have 4 or 5 regular fans, and it literally took all of them to get this shot. One or two were aimed at the side, to get the hair started, and then the others were used to push the hair up from the back. This along with 35 or 40 pictures (you wonder why she looks ticked?) and merging 4 together got the shot you see.

I guess the light could have been more dynamic in hindsight, however we were really having a hard time getting the hair to do what we wanted, and I was worried that anything harder would hinder getting her hair to move like we wanted and or limit when we could shoot.

But again, you never know what's going to happen if a model brings up something, and most of the time it's worth a try!