March 3, 2009 – Fact: The Ting Tings bring more dance-punk than you can shake your butt at, but that doesn’t stop you from trying. Rising to the challenge of the big stage of the Pageant, the Ting Tings performed to over 1,500 screaming, jubilant fans in the perfect Friday-night dance party.
Photographer’s Notes:
This was an ISO 6400 show at f/2.8, which is to say, this was a rather tricky gig with regard to lighting. The venue was blasting the water hazers for this gig and the entire stage was covered in a thick veil, cutting contrast and reducing visibility.
The haze was so thick, in fact, that in combination with the low light, even the mighty D3 had trouble at some points during the quick three songs of the shoot.
On the big stage of the Pageant, the Ting Tings actually felt quite spread apart. The most successful shots of Katie and Jules together came when Katie jumped up on the drum kit’s riser. Aside from that, shooting angles for both performers together were more limited.
I shot this set primarily with the 24-70mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm. Due to the setup and distance of the performers from the front of the stage, the 14-24mm wasn’t very useful for this show.
This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 8th, 2009 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, images, Jules De Martino, Katie White, live, Music Photography, photography, photos, pics, ting tings, tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Hey Todd – great pics.
Here was my experience shooting the Ting Tings:
http://popwreckoning.com/2009/04/08/harassed-and-coerced-by-the-ting-tings-tour-manager/
Hey Nick,
It’s good you stood your ground, thanks for sharing your experience, unfortunate as it was. It’s a shame the situation played out like it did.
When I shot, there were dozens and dozens of people in the audience snapping away with their cameras. There’s nothing that could be done with so many cameras.
“the 14-24mm wasn’t very useful for this show.”
Man, that sucks :(
Still, you still captured in the way only you can, fantastic stuff!
Thanks for the kind comment, I appreciate it. The funny thing is, this show was moved from a much smaller venue. The original venue has a capacity of about 350, while the venue they played caps at 2,000.
The stage of the smaller place is probably about 10% the size of the Pageant’s stage, and only a foot or so off the ground – long story short, it would have been perfect for the 14-24mm.
Great jbo as usual!
I especially like the picture number 3.
Most of the time, when I can’t get to the side of the stage and have to shoot the drummer in such angles, AF ends up focusing on the drum instead of the drummer (even though I do place an AF point over the drummer’s face). Is it because of D3 superior AF performance over my 40D that you get it so sharp and clean? Am I doing something wrong?
Hey Alexis,
Thanks very much. The issue with AF locking onto parts of the kit is a tricky one. Ultimately I think the answer depends on how you have your AF set up. It’s important not to use any of the dynamic AF modes in this case, but only a single AF point for the greatest precision and control (though it sounds like you’re already doing this). Even still, AF sensors are often larger than what we see as indicated in the viewfinder, so it’s possible the camera is locking on to a part of the kit around the drummer when you’re lining up the shot.
The best practice is probably to try and lock AF when the drummer is most clear of the kit – not easy, I know, especially when shooting through the holes in a kit.
Todd,
I love the energy of this set,
It’s a shame that the shooting situation was so tricky for them.
I assume because you were shooting at ISO 6400 the entire set that you weren’t using your strobes during their performance.
Do you find an issue with using strobes with the fog?
Hey Mike,
Thanks for the comment. I’d have loved to setup strobes for this set, but I was told that the drummer Jules has photosensitive epilepsy (flash epilepsy). Security was clamping down on flash from P&S cameras throughout the set.
For the majority of my shooting, I work with the house/tour lighting.
Using flash with heavy haze can be tricky, but it all depends on the direction and use of the lights. Using flash with haze can produce some great effects with the right setup.
The Ting Tings, more dance-punk than you can shake your butt at, but that doesn’t stop you from trying: http://is.gd/rC9A
Nice set Todd. I have an idea how dark it was if you had to use ISO6400 – it’s what I need to shoot at most of the time for gigs here. The purple lights and haze make for a good effect though, well done.
Really late on commenting but i’m surprised you didn’t mention that Jules gets seizures from flashing lights. they had SOOOO many signs up yelling at people in the crowd here in Denver.