Going Pro?

I was recently contacted by a local web media company to start being a contributor to their concert / culture website. A friend of a friend already shoots for them and asked me to send some examples of my work. They liked it. I'm in.

My first gig under Production Iris was a group called Scala & Kolacny Brothers at Montreal's Club Soda.

I had honestly never heard of them, but I was imagining a jazz duo. A few days before the show, I youtube them to get an idea of what they do and man, was I mistaken. They are a choir of 20 or so Belgian women, conducted and led by the Kolacny brothers. Ok... kind of different than what I thought. They are actually a very interesting group to listen to. Their version of Radiohead's Creep is actually the intro song for the The Social Network movie trailer.

This was my first gig with a 3 songs and out rule, which is typical for concert photography. I was also mandated to produce 15 images that would be presented to the group prior to publication on the website. Pressure was on!

I had a rough time with the gig. The stage was washed with a blue light for the majority of the first songs, which I quickly figured out causes havoc on my sensor and totally dilutes skin tones and textures. In other words, my images were mush.

I started to freak out a bit as I was struggling with getting a decent image by the time the first song was over. In the end however, I managed to get the 15 images, although I was disappointed with my overall output. I wanted more. But I did learn a lot from my first concert, so that's a bonus. I'll hopefully be able to carry my new knowledge on and into the next show.


**UPDATE**
The group actually loved the images and they ended up purchasing 5 of them! Not too shabby me thinks for my first time going pro.

The gallery is up on my website if you want to check it out. Click here