Shooting Tomatoes

Shooting the New Orleans band The Tomatoes is something I always enjoy. Good music aside, they always supply a contagious energy that translates easily into great photographs (it’s there – it’s just up to me to try and capture it).

The Tomatoes

I have shot them in many venues before (my favorite being Chaz Fest 2009) so I was excited to shoot them at the House of Blues for 92.3’s concert. NOLA Experience had kept me busy all week – where incoming freshmen at Tulane University come a week early to experience and learn about New Orleans. It’s a positive program; among other things, I’ve shot in the swamp, on the levees of Holy Cross, covered in beignet powdered sugar, in a buggy, underneath King Kong, and over a hot frying pan of blackened fish. Every day, each shoot requires careful planning and packing of the camera bag. Despite the pulverizing heat and tight schedule, I was pleased to escape any technical slipups that week. Maybe this minor success made me lazy? Or hopefully, just momentarily stupid by reason of exhaustion. Five minutes before the show I realized that while I had remembered to charge and pack my Quantum Battery Charger to guarantee a stronger and quicker flash, I had forgotten my flash. This changed everything. To compensate I upped my ISO, set my f-stop at around 2.8-3.2, crossed my fingers, and hoped that Scott’s nonchalant suggestion of creating “arty” photos came true.

House of Blues graciously gave me a photo pass and I was excited to wander into spaces with my camera that normally I would not be able to go… but what difference would this make without a flash? The Tomatoes, of course, didn’t disappoint and their 30-minute set was high-powered and dynamic, but they were continually bathed in red light. A double conspiracy – blanket the stage in red light – and then hit one or two of them (usually Will or Scott) with a white light that made them look like, through a camera lens, well… mushed tomatoes. Cuss and shoot. Cuss and shoot. Cuss and shoot.

RED LIGHTS ARE THE DEVIL!

Untouched Mushed Tomato

Even at a Photoshop conference I attended in Florida last year, the creators said that the only way to fix red light was to transform them into black and white photos. True dat. The regular red light, when illuminating the stage, created a look that was a distinct matter of taste. Red lights? Blue lights? Green lights? Simply personal preference. But the double strike of red lights and spotlight – the only way to fix any of the red plastic mush photos was to change them to black and white – and even then some were unfixable. I even sent samples of “bad red lights” and “good red lights” to Photoshop guru Scott Frilot, who agreed. So this explains the dominance of black and white photos in the Tomatoes set (although I do love this medium). I just wish the photos were changed because of my personal artistic preference – not by an artistic hostage situation created by a red-light loving light operator. Despite everything, I am overall pleased with the photos. A fun new challenge.

Red Light I Can Live With

But here is my point… I have an opportunity to try this again – and pray that not only will I remember my flash, but that also the light situation won’t be similar.

The Tomatoes are playing this Thursday, September 15th at One Eyed Jacks. They play in between two great bands, the local band Mahayla and the Meat Puppets. Check them out if you can – they will be debuting a new song, “The Days Go By” which you can preview HERE.

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