Category Archives: Originals Bands

Morgan Evans – Sept 12th

September 18, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Morgan Evans and his country rock band did a great show at Revolver in Melbourne recently.

One of the support acts was Jessica Jade who is a very talented Melbourne singer, and known to my assistant photographer Michael.

It was great to see her band perform as the support act, as we have been meaning to check out her music for a while now.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos of Jessica Jade and her band can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Jessica Jade September 12th 2014

Last time Morgan played at Revolver, we experienced white balance problems on one of the cameras, resulting in a blueish tinge to a lot of the photos, and we were not really happy with the results overall.

However, this time we made sure we got everything right, and we were pleased with the resulting pictures of the show.

Several photos that were taken while red and orange light were on the band, were successfully converted to Black and White during post processing.

For the colour pictures, we did some Desaturating in Photoshop, to reduce down some overly bright colours, especially those from the red spot lights.

We also found that the A77 photos are often darker than they look on the camera preview once they are downloaded to PC. These pictures were easily brightened up in Photoshop during post-processing, using the Brightness/Contrast function.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Morgan Evans September 12th 2014

As well as shooting the band, we also did the post show “Meet and Greet” photos for the fans.

A full Flickr Gallery of “Meet and Greet” Photos can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Morgan Evans Meet and Greet

Further information about Morgan Evans can be found at their Facebook Page:

Morgan Evans Facebook Page

There is also an official website for Morgan:

Morgan Evans Website

The Band’s Official Fan Page is also on Facebook here:

Morgan Evans Fan Club Facebook Page

EQUIPMENT:

Sony Alpha A-77 MkII Camera
Sony 18-55mm F2.8

Sony Alpha A-55 Camera
Tamron 24-70mm F2.8

Sony HVL-F43M Flash

Gary Fong Gamma Blade Diffuser

Panasonic Lumix LX7 Compact Camera

On this shoot we used the Lumix LX7 for the band playing to the crowd shots, and it is a great compact camera for low light with its 1.4 Aperture.

The Sony A77II was used for band shots, and all of the Meet and Greet photos.

Shooting with the A77II was done in full manual mode at f2.8 and 1/60 to 1/125 speed, and ISO varied from ISO 400 for bright spotlight shots, to ISO 1600 for other shots.

The Sony A55 works brilliantly teamed with the Tamron lens and set to “SCN” Sports Mode. I give this camera to my assistant Micheal so that he can effectively just “Point and Shoot” close up photos of band players, especially the drummer. He was also able to get some good non-flash photos of people in the crowd using the A-55.

In post processing we tried something new and sized the longest side of photos at 850 pixels, rather than 960 pixels, and saved them as WEB photos at 90% (11/12) quality, rather than the usual 85% we have been using for previous shoots.

We are not really sure whether this made a huge difference, but the photos seemed to be okay when loaded up to Facebook and Flickr online.

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Enjoy,
Passy

Originals Bands

Cuckoo For Caca – Espy

July 2, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Cuckoo for Caca are a “Faith No More” Tribute Band from Melbourne Australia.

These photos are from their show at The Espy in St Kilda on Friday June 27th 2014.

The songs they played included all of the Faith Hits, including a brilliant rendition of the Band’s biggest hit: “Easy Like Sunday Morning”.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Cuckoo for Caca at Espy June 27th 2014

Further information about Cuckoo For Caca can be found at their Facebook Page:

Cuckoo For Caca Facebook Page

EQUIPMENT:

Sony Alpha A-77 Camera
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8

Sony Alpha A-55 Camera
Tamron 24-70mm F2.8

Sony HVL-F43M Flash

Gary Fong Gamma Blade Diffuser

Gary Fong Collapsible Lightsphere Diffuser

Panasonic Lumix LX7 Compact Camera

This shoot was in the Gershwin Room at The Espy where they have great lighting, but heartbreakingly nobody was working the lighting desk, and the lights were just set on “set and forget”!

This meant that the Guitarist and Bass Player were in the shadows a lot of the time, with really strong backlights behind them. Not at all ideal conditions for getting good photos.

Only the singer was in reasonable good lighting, and the drummer was in virtual darkness.

This meant that the Sony A-77 had to be set to an unfavourably high ISO of 1600, Shutter 1/100, and Aperture full open at 2.8. This resulted in quite grainy shots, which were dull and dark.

The Sony A-77 really only works well up to ISO 800, because it is not a great low light camera like the Nikon cameras are. However on ISO 1000 with the Flash, and a shutter speed of 125, the A-77 is unbeatable for “Party People” shots.

In addition, a lot of the band shots were not crisp in focus, which was perhaps due to the dull light, or else due to the band members moving around a bit at the shallow Aperture of F2.8.

Auto White balance was used, because the singer’s shirt seemed to be coming our reasonably white during the shoot. However, once unloaded from the camera, the white shirts seem to have a pinkish purple hue, and so maybe we should have manually set the WB onto the band members white shirts. Something to try out another time.

A lot of gamma exposure had to be added in Photoshop, to reduce the background grains, as well as heavy use of the smart sharpen filter.

The Sony A-55 was set to Auto SCN “Sports Mode” and used with the bigger Tamron 24-70mm lens, which seems to be a god combination and produced some great close up shots.

The Panasonic Lumix LX7 produced a few good crowd pictures, but does not seem to be working so well of late. I need to go through the CD Advanced Manual and see if some of the settings have gone astray.

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Enjoy,
Passy

Originals Bands

Morgan Evans – June 2014

June 23, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Morgan Evans is a great Australian Country Rocker who is destined for International stardom.

We were lucky enough to have a break in our schedule when we found out that he was in Melbourne, and the regular in-house photographer at the venue was ill and they needed someone to do photos. What a Lucky Break!

We first saw Morgan in early 2013 at the Deniliquin Easter Festival and were totally blown away by this fresh original talent.

It was so good to see him again, and hear all those great original tunes.

What was very impressive was how much time he gave to his Melbourne Fans at the post show Meet and Greet.

“Revolver Upstairs” was a great venue to host the show, and the people there are very professional and great to work with.

A full Flickr Gallery of Photos can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Morgan Evans at Revolver Upstairs

A Flickr Gallery of the Meet and Greet Photos can be viewed here:

Flickr Photo Gallery of Morgan Evans Melbourne Meet and Greet

Further information about Morgan Evans can be found at these Facebook Pages:

Morgan Evans Music Page

Morgan Evans Fans Facebook Page

EQUIPMENT:

Camera One:

Sony Alpha A-77 Camera
Tamron 17-50mm F2.8
Sony HVL-F43M Flash
Gary Fong Gamma Blade Diffuser

Camera Two:

Sony Alpha A-55 Camera
Tamron 24-70mm F2.8

As this shoot was an important event, I took my travel photographer friend Michael along, and he took photos on the A-55 with the camera set to Auto White Balance, and Auto “SCN” mode.

The A-55 was also used with the bigger Tamron lens, and it captured some very good images which have made it into the album.

The A-77 was used for all of the wide angle shots, and People Pictures taken with the flash and diffuser.

The A-77 was set to ISO’s of 800, 1250, and even up to 1600 for shots that featured both the stage and the crowd.

All shots were done in full manual mode at Aperture of 2.8 for band photos, and varying apertures up to 5.6 for the group shots using flash.

Shutter speed was set to 1/60 through to 1/125.

Unfortunately there is a blueish almost Avatar Movie hue in several photos, which I assume is due to me not getting the color “white balance” fully correct.

I used the A-77 WB setting of “Incandescent”.

I changed to Incandescent after firing off some test shots with WB set to Auto or AWB. These shots did not look the best, and so I changed the setting Incandescent.

I tried using “Levels” in Photoshop to adjust the color balance but this did not seem to improve the blueish photos that much.

Shots taken with the A-77 appeared darker than they really should have been, because the venue seemed to have quite good lighting, especially when you compare to the A-55 shots, which had much better color in them.

Perhaps the darkness of the shots was due to having the white balance set incorrectly, as the lights were not at the color temperature of incandescent.

White Balance is something I really need to work on for future events, as this needs to be set up very carefully to get good accurate colors.

The previously super reliable Sony Flash decided to malfunction for some unknown reason when I started to take the “Party People” shots. For some reason it just refused to fire off.

There was a flashing green light in the display, which is an indication that the camera could not focus in the low light inside the venue. Maybe if I had put the ISO up to 1600 to trick the camera this would have made the flash come good.

I am not sure how I fixed it, but it seemed to be that with a full reboot of camera and flash, and setting the ISO to 1000, and Shutter to 1/125, everything seemed to suddenly be normal.

It was great fun shooting Morgan, and hopefully he will be back in Melbourne later this year.

If you enjoy visiting Photos By Passy, why not get a free subscription to the website.

You can then receive notifications of new items and updates directly to your email address.

Go to the subscribe area on the left hand sidebar, (or down the bottom of the page if using a mobile phone), fill in your email address and then click the “Subscribe” button.

Enjoy,
Passy

Originals Bands

Photo Gallery of Thirsty Merc Concert

April 8, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Here are some random photos from a “Thirsty Merc” concert we
attended a couple of years ago.

This is an example of a WordPress Jetpack “Tiled Mosaic” style Photo Gallery. Very easy to make and very effective. I am impressed!

If you click on any of the photos it will open up a pop up Lightbox slideshow on the page.

Equipment:

Sony Alpha A-55
Sony 18-250mm F3.5 to 5.6 Zoom Lens

Originals Bands

Dirt River Radio at The Elsternwick

April 8, 2014 Passy Leave a comment

Dirt River Radio are led by Heath Brady and Alex Raunjak, with Kellie Fernando providing some nice solid backing Vocals.

DRR plays original songs which encompass Rock, Ballads, and Rockabilly styles. Many of the songs have great dry Aussie Humor in them, and the band looks great with their Giant Gretch Guitars.

These photos are from a Gig in March 2014 at The Elsternwick Hotel, which was also attended by well known rock photographer Eric “Chowie” Chow. Chowie is a very talented photographer who has been shooting bands for over 10 years and really knows how to capture the moment.

The next biggest highlight (after meeting Chowie in person for the first time), was some old drunk guy called “Your Dad” who followed me around the venue mimicking all my photography moves.