music show photography attempt

[Seb]

Hi all,

It's currently a great time of the year downthere in Montreal as our jazz festival is going on. I have tickets for few shows were I wont be allowed to take pictures but I had the opportunity to assist to a set by Jillian Lebeck last night outdoor were anyone can shoot.
Jillian is a young pianist/singer/composer who is not known yet but I am convinced that she will go a long way in the jazz world considering how talented she is.

Enough for the story, now I shot few pictures (hand held) and one turned out not to be so shaky but the color cast was quite weird due to the lightning on the scene. Thus I decided to mess with colors in Photoshop but I also adjusted levels and tried to correct perspective (all manually).

The first picture is straight out of the camera, the second one is corrected.
What do you guy's think about it?

f 2/8 1/13sec 28mm iso 200

thanks in advance

Seb

[gahspidy]

Seb,
I love jazz as well as lots of other music and wish i could join you up there. Sounds like a great time.
I think I like the original better. The crop you did I think is too tight and seems you lost shadow detail with your levels adjustment. I would try leaving the crop alone as it looks good with space above them and some stage. I think maybe you should just do some desaturation of the colors and then apply some unsharp mask to help clarify the details. Also, a slight "fade correction" may be helpful if you have that in ps.

[Elysian]

Not much color correction you can do in this one Seb. This is not a matter of color casts but the use of different lights, each with its own particular color. I don't think the image is too dark or light either, it only suffers from some bright overexposed areas. You can try to use the shadows/highlight filter to retrieve some of the details in these bright areas, but leave the shadows alone.
I do think that the sign is distracting and definitely a reason to remove it.
My impression is that there is need to adjust the perspective; it's not distracting.
What you could have tried is holding the camera up high in the air and trying the "lucky" shot. This is what the pros sometimes do when there is a huge crowd in front of them. It takes some practice, but it's not all that difficult. You have after all a digital cam so it really doesn't matter if you have to take 5 shots to get it right and you can see the immediate results on your LCD viewfinder.

[Seb]

Seb,
I love jazz as well as lots of other music and wish i could join you up there. Sounds like a great time.
I think I like the original better. The crop you did I think is too tight and seems you lost shadow detail with your levels adjustment. I would try leaving the crop alone as it looks good with space above them and some stage. I think maybe you should just do some desaturation of the colors and then apply some unsharp mask to help clarify the details. Also, a slight "fade correction" may be helpful if you have that in ps.

Hello Gary,

It is a great time for jazz lovers right now. I just saw Charlie Hayden with John Taylor on tuesday night and that was brilliant (but that is totally off topic lol).

Quite frankly, this one is more of a snapshot composition wise than a carefully planned shot. That was the first time that I was bringing my camera with me in such an event and I have found the crowd to be somewhat intimidating (I didn't meant to bother people by blocking their view during the set). Anyway, I think that you are right about not having included enough of the stage above them. By doing so, the proportions of the picture would also be more conventionals.

Thank you for your imput, I am going to rework the shot tonight accordingly to your comments.

Seb

[Seb]

Not much color correction you can do in this one Seb. This is not a matter of color casts but the use of different lights, each with its own particular color. I don't think the image is too dark or light either, it only suffers from some bright overexposed areas. You can try to use the shadows/highlight filter to retrieve some of the details in these bright areas, but leave the shadows alone.
I do think that the sign is distracting and definitely a reason to remove it.
My impression is that there is need to adjust the perspective; it's not distracting.
What you could have tried is holding the camera up high in the air and trying the "lucky" shot. This is what the pros sometimes do when there is a huge crowd in front of them. It takes some practice, but it's not all that difficult. You have after all a digital cam so it really doesn't matter if you have to take 5 shots to get it right and you can see the immediate results on your LCD viewfinder.

Hello Joe,

Honnestly, I haven't thought about the ''lucky approach'' at all! That's a simple but very good idea. I don't think that I could get my camera to be steady that way though. This call for a significantly higher iso value. I'll play with the filters to see what I can come up with.

Thanks a lot

Seb

[Seb]

Here is my final take on this one. It's still not perfect (I didn't even dare to try to edit the sign out of the picture and I haven't found the shadow/highlights filter (I am using the french version of PS and they must have given an inappropriate name to this filter...)).

Moreover, I desaturated the colors and applied an unsharp mask after having downsized the picture. I tried a crop of a more conventionnal ratio as well.

Comments are welcome.

Seb

[gahspidy]

I would say this is the best one.

[Janie]

Cool shot but you know what? I thought they were all midgets until I realized it was the angle! The yellow hue seems a little to strong - I wish you could have been up a little higher!

[Seb]

Cool shot but you know what? I thought they were all midgets until I realized it was the angle! The yellow hue seems a little to strong - I wish you could have been up a little higher!

LOL!

Thank you for your honnesty Janie. Geez, now that you have said that I can't look at it without thinking that they are a bunch of midgets as well(but no they are not at all). lol
I was in the first third of a crowd directly sit on the ground. I didn't wanted to stand up to shot these for obvious reasons but I will definately do things differently the next time.

Then again, thank you for your comments.

regards

Seb

[Janie]

LOL!

Thank you for your honnesty Janie. Geez, now that you have said that I can't look at it without thinking that they are a bunch of midgets as well(but no they are not at all). lol
I was in the first third of a crowd directly sit on the ground. I didn't wanted to stand up to shot these for obvious reasons but I will definately do things differently the next time.

Then again, thank you for your comments.

regards

Seb

LOL I didn't want to offend ya! Hey, on halloween last year there was a midget band playing at the stone pony and it was like watching the seven dwarfs on stage - they were an incredible band! It was funny, my friend Chey was dressed like cat woman with a whip and left with one of them. Guess she dug them! When I saw your image it instantly reminded me of that! Thought it was the same band!

[Seb]

LOL I didn't want to offend ya! Hey, on halloween last year there was a midget band playing at the stone pony and it was like watching the seven dwarfs on stage - they were an incredible band! It was funny, my friend Chey was dressed like cat woman with a whip and left with one of them. Guess she dug them! When I saw your image it instantly reminded me of that! Thought it was the same band!

Hey, no offense taken! You raised a very good point. In fact, you made me laugh at my own picture (I had a pretty good time lol).

Seb