This blog explores my interest in photography, both digital and film. Many of the photographs are from Denver's streets, cemeteries, parks, zoo, hidden places, and surrounding areas.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Tegan's Fingers and the Art of Cropping
At the Tegan and Sara show I saw in Aspen in April, I wasn't able to get close enough to the stage to get the shots I really wanted. And there were a lot of people between me and the band. So I later spent some time cropping the photographs to get better views. This has helped me to see into the pictures more and I found some interesting details.
I cropped one to show this close-up of Tegan's guitar. It's not really a great picture -- it's a bit too blurry maybe -- but I like the way the guitar strings seem to vibrate under Tegan's fingers. This is something you really don't notice when looking at the entire photograph.
Here is the original photograph before cropping. You can click on either one to see a larger view.
Another crop from the same original is at Flickr here: Tegan Quin of Tegan and Sara on Flickr.
Recently I watched the Beatles 1965 movie Help, which has a number of scenes showing the Beatles miming to various songs. These sequences influenced later music promo films, especially MTV video clips. Some of them include close-up shots of the Beatles playing their instruments, showing fingers on strings. I guess this could be called "finger syncing." As a non-musician I've often been fascinated watching musicians play their instruments, especially with the way their fingers touch guitar strings or the keys of a saxophone or piano, or hold drumsticks. I tried to capture that idea here. In a natural yet digital kind of way...
Friday, May 02, 2008
Tegan and Sara - Belly Up, Aspen
Tegan and Sara played at Belly Up Aspen in Colorado on April 30, 2008. It was off-season in Aspen, the period between the end of the ski season and summer, so the town was quiet. But the club was filled with a boisterous crowd of Tegan and Sara fans, including many who had driven from Denver. I was able to take a few photos with my Nikon D80 from the crush of crazy fans on the dance floor in front of the stage. All four of these were cropped in camera. The camera was set on manual (f1.4, 1/60 shutter speed). I used a Nikkor 85mm f1.4 lens with no flash.
In the eighties I photographed Wednesday Week at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach, California. The two Belly Up clubs are separately owned by a pair of brothers.
More Tegan and Sara at: Tegan and Sara Photographs by Joe Beine