Celebrating the Holidays!

[Asher Kelman]

I had the opportunity to photograph back stage and from the Concert Hall with the Santa Monica Philharmonic Orchestra playing to a come for free and donate if you can holiday performance.

The folk poured in, a lot putting $10 to $20 in a glass bowl, some just $1, but this crowd included every type and class of person in the area and all ages. The Walt disney Concert Hall, by contrast, is as one would expect for the most successful orchestra in the country, hugely expensive at $60 upwards for a seat!

I took a lot of pictures back stage timing the shutter of my 6D, (without using my sound blimp) when the drums thundered or the orchestra was loud enough. No one was disturbed. It's very different from clicking away in the auditorium itself.

They had a choir combined from several sources and these were crowded in the front and so hid almost completely the orchestra. So I took overlapping shots from the back of the hall and for stitching in Autopano Giga. Cropped, in height, the final image would be 36 inches wide by 10 inches heigh at 300 dpi native resolution.

Asher Kelman: Santa Monica Philharmonic and Choir

December 2013

Conductor & Music Director, Guido Lamell

Canon 6D 70-200 2.8L IS, PS CC​

With the harsh lighting from above, it's hard to get even illumination in all the faces. One can do a reasonable job in photoshop to even out the lighting, but then the small features and shadows can be brought up with Topaz Detail plugin for Photoshop, Lightroom or Aperture.

Asher Kelman: Santa Monica Philharmonic and Choir

December 2013

Conductor & Music Director, Guido Lamell

Canon 6D 70-200 2.8L IS, PS CC

Topaz Detail Filter for small features and shadows​

More to follow from on stage shooting from the wings. Also there will be a special treat, I also met the inspiring and talented young concert master, Heidi Hatch who is really accomplished with a fine future ahead of her and grabbed a few shots backstage next to the arrays of ropes and pulleys for the theater stage crew.

Asher

 

[Wolfgang Plattner]

Hi,

great ... as I'm photographin' from time to time the events of choirs (e.g. on sunday in a quite dark church) I appreciate your work here very much!
An impressing ideal for me ...!

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Great job Asher, as usual.

PS: Those two images seem identical to me? Perhaps a typo in your url?

 

[Asher Kelman]

Thanks, Cem,

I guess I shouldn't be sipping wine as I post! Hope you can see the difference now!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Hi,

great ... as I'm photographin' from time to time the events of choirs (e.g. on sunday in a quite dark church) I appreciate your work here very much!
An impressing ideal for me ...!

Wolfgang,

It's a time to give back! Amazing how good it feels when everyone gives their best and folk respond well like that. These concerts allow access to music and that's part of the glue of a community. We're privileged to have such talented musicians willing to put on concerts that folk otherwise would have no chance of experiencing.

Asher

 

[Cem_Usakligil]

Thanks, Cem,

I guess I shouldn't be sipping wine as I post! Hope you can see the difference now!

Asher

Definitely! That made a difference.

 

[Asher Kelman]

Come back soon as I'm gathering more and will post them shortly!

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

Well, I discovered one picture with Guido Lamell, the conductor turning and showing his face. So I reprocessed everything and used Topaz plugins for getting out more detail, opening up the blacks and finally sharpening the large amount of noise in the images.

So here's a new version including that the Raw files were corrected with the Xrite plugin for test shots with the 6D using a Gretag McBeth digital color chart.

Asher Kelman: Santa Monica Philharmonic and Choir

December 2013

Conductor & Music Director, Guido Lamell

Canon 6D 70-200 2.8L IS, 3200 ISO, PS CC

Topaz Clarity and Detail Filters then Denoise​

As you can see, most of the really giant orchestra is hidden from the audience's view, unless one is upstairs in the balcony. From there, one can get everything. but that was not my job, that day.

Next I'll post back stage images.

Asher

 

[Asher Kelman]

A word on technique. Either an 80 MP Phase One or an 80 MP Leaf camera back would have been able to get just the same view in one shot but at half the resolution. We have an 80 MP image shaped to the stage. Still any one of those camera would give a better quality image because of the larger dynamic range.

For the above pictures, I used a Canon 6D full frame camera with a 70-200 2.8 L IS II lens to get the overlapping shots. Usually the stage can be covered with 3-4 shots with the camera in portrait mode.

The challenge of taking pictures of many people on stage is that lighting usually varies by 5 or more stops from one place to the next. Worse are the sides as there is no light to make up for the fall off there.

Stage technicians do not realize that in order to prevent light fall off, one needs a perimeter of lighting beyond where one is working. To add to that challenge, the musicians and choir all are moving to the music. Add to that some, while waiting for their next part, might wander off to some fantasy world with their eyes shut and mouth open or distorted or just look down. So to get an attractive picture, one has to choose heads and bodies that work together to give a sense of the vitality of the concert, not the truth about any separate frozen moment.

In my work, neighboring faces can have been captured 3 minutes or more apart. One has to constantly overlap but keep the camera at the same axis of rotation through the front pupil as one samples the stage repeatedly, building up the image.

I didn't bracket exposures, as successive shots cannot be simple made into HDR when everyone is changing positions of hands and face.

Ideally, one would use a larger sensor and a wider angle lens. The iPhone can take perfectly usable pictures of an entire orchestra if one is sitting reasonably close. However, the size of the file is not big enough for more than an 8x10 or pictures for the web. Folk can be individually recognized, but getting a big print is a challenge.

I have pictures and I'll give it a go and post results separately.

Asher