Eric Hamilton – Celebrity / DJ / Nightlife Photographer

DJ Micro is an influential trance / breakbeat DJ from New York City. Thanks to RISE for bringing him to the Elevate dance floor at the Hotel! Elevate features VIP stage access that brings VIP wristband-wearers on the stage to mingle with the performing artists. On the one hand, it lets people get close to the action – on the other, it makes shooting a bit more challenging. These tips might help you navigate similar obstacles:

Use a Zoom Lens - I love primes, and I frequently shoot with my trusty 50mm f1.8, but in crowded spaces, where it’s difficult to control the distance between you and your subject, a zoom lens is a great asset. Shooting in clubs, I prefer my 18-135mm. It gives me great range and sharp images. It’s very distorting on the wide end, but it’s pretty sharp, and easy on the neck (lightweight). Oh – and it’s cheap to replace if a drunk club kid manages to destroy it – around $420 new.

Crop Close - If there’s a lot going on, it’s often difficult to keep the frame simple and maintain a strong subject focus. For these situations, it’s often best to choose close crops – headshots, head and shoulders, etc…

Use Off-Camera Flash - If you haven’t got an external flash and you aren’t using it off camera, you’re missing the strobist revolution. You can use small strobes the same way professional photographers use studio lighting.

Use Light for Emphasis - In a dark, cluttered environment, it’s relatively easy to avoid light spill on the background so that the emphasis stays on your subject. In tho close-ups pictured, I was contending with all sorts of clutter, people, and general craziness. By aiming the light away from the background, you can keep it just where you want it – on your subject. Minimizing distraction will give your photos stronger impact.

Capture the Right Moment! - One of the most important, and easily overlooked aspects of photography is timing. I have said it before, and I’ll say it again. Knowing when NOT to click is every bit as important as choosing a great subject, or getting the light right. In any non-still life photographic situation, you’re going to encounter key moments when the stars align to create your perfect photograph. While shooting musicians and DJ’s, I pay careful attention to composition, to the performer’s expression, to the rhythm of the music (you’ll find the performers sync up to it), to the focal plane, and the ambient lighting. When they all come together, that’s when you click the shutter release. Don’t miss those magic moments while you review shots of boring expressions.

View The Full Set on PartyUtah.com

I make my living designing lighting for live events and architectural installation, but I love photography, and use the medium as a means of exploring lighting tools and techniques. I recently explored using RGB LED as the only light source for a photoshoot and got some surprising results. I had had some success using the Altman Spectra Par series of fixtures on some live events and since I had them on hand for an extra day or so I decided to experiment. I shoot with a Nikon D70, for those playing at home.

The benefits to these sources are obvious, if you’re looking for dynamic, rapid color changing you can’t beat this technology. One push of the slider and your red light is purple, or bright blue, or teal or orange or…you get the idea. But like any other tool, there is a trade off, in this case two. The first, they are not as bright as advertised, and second, more importantly, “white” light is tough to achieve.

First on brightness, in fairness, I didn’t even look at the footcandle data before I set up. I lit a faux brick wall for an event ceremony with the fixtures I had around and there was plenty of light to my eye, so I figured the lens would see things the same way. I was wrong. My 18mm-50mm adjustable lens was wide open at f3.5 and I found my shutters unbearably slow. My ISO had to drop to a disappointing 800 (you can really pick up noise on the D70 at 800 and above), at that ISO I was shooting with a shutter at 1/50 which for posed action was acceptable, if not ideal.

The next issue was white balance. The D70 like most DSLR allows custom WB. I won’t go into the procedure for setting it, as you know your camera if you’re reading this blog, here’s what you need to know about RGB LED and your sensor. Every camera is different and will experience color differently but RGB LED wash lights tend to have similar properties. A circuit board with an array of Red, Green and Blue LEDs emits light against a lens, the lens is designed to mix the light and project a smooth color. Mixing the intensities of Red, Green, and Blue (the primary colors of light) will create an incredible array of colors, and in theory these three colors, mixed in perfect balance will give you “white.” This, of course, is not the case in the real world. Without getting into the weeds on LED technology basically blue LED is brighter than warmer colors, this is due to limitations in phospor technology and flaws in the engineering of the fixture. To be fair, this generation of Spectra par was never meant for what I was using it for. This was an experiment after all.

So I ran the fixture to full and pointed it at a white card, and even to my eye the color was very cool. I didn’t have a light meter with a kelvin gauge, but by eye anywhere from 5600k to 6000k is a conservative estimate for the temperature coming out of these bad boys. I shot several test cards and still was seeing blue-ish results in test photos. I focused a second fixture on the white card and this time backed the blue off 10% this got be a little closer to where I wanted to be. Slightly cool, but acceptable.

I didn’t have all that much time to perfect my strategy anyway as the models were beginning to arrive. The Spectra Pars have 3 lenses a narrow , medium, and wide flood. I had six fixtures so I opted to use 2 in each beam spread, my thought was that 2 would act as key lights, 2 fill and 2 highlight. In general, this strategy worked pretty well. It amazed me how much better the white balance got the more sources were used in the setup. In the early shots it was hard to avoid super saturation, but as the shoot wore on I learned that I needed 2 or 3 heads set to “white” with the rest as a color fill if I didn’t want over-the-top color.

All of the photos in the post are from this shoot. As you can see, some are more over the top color wise, but I was able to get pretty true whites. None of these images have color-correction done in post, just cropping, and of course they are saved for the web so we’re losing resolution and color information in these versions. All those caveats, you get a sense for what is possible with RGB LED. A few take-aways:

Give yourself time to adjust in-camera white balance.

Be wary of mixing these with another source on your subject. That’s not to say it can’t be done, but too many “whites” might be hard to prepare for.

Work with a theatrical lighting supplier when renting these. Explain what you want to accomplish, not only will they point you to the best gear, they can find you a cheap and easy-to-setup control solution.

Have more questions? Have you tried this before? The comment section awaits.

I love to be shooting, but at the end of the day, I’m shooting photos for a reason – so my clients can use them. Sometimes it’s fun to take a look at what they’re being used for, and how the shots are reinterpreted in different contexts. It reminds me of song remixes – something I’m a huge fan of.

In the case of the 2nd series of photos – the photographs were shot for an editorial feature, and the context was an important part of the photograph – I never would have dreamed they’d use that shot on the cover – the background was much too busy, but sometimes photographs get used in surprising ways. I’ve had shots I took at clubs just for fun get printed on freeway billboards.

Once they leave the camera, they take on a life of their own.

P.S. Don’t forget to check out Dmitry KO at Harry O’s this Friday for same high-energy electro-house goodness. I hear he’s planning to drop some remixes, too.