Herbie Hancock at TED2009
TED’s tagline is “Ideas Worth Spreading.” There were certainly more ideas shared at TED2009 than any of us could absorb, even in four days. But, spaced throughout the program of big ideas were several incredible performances which fulfilled the E (as in Entertainment) in TED’s name. Almost a mental tonic to help absorb everything else going on, each of these performances were stunning. Friday night’s performance was given by Herbie Hancock, with Marcus Miller on bass and Harvey Mason on drums. Here are just a few of the photographs I made that night.
The last shot above was taken during the encore. At the end of the scheduled set, I had slipped backstage to catch Herbie playing from stage right. When he went back out for the encore, I used all the excitement going on to cross through the stage set layers to get right behind Harvey Mason drumming. Hopefully, I stayed out of view of the video cameras well enough! No matter. The resulting shot was totally worth it, capturing the musicians on their level and the crowd standing there listening to every note.
Thank you Herbie, Marcus, and Harvey for a great set. You guys rocked it.
11 Comments
Nice photos man! Love the light. Nikon? :)
You abandoning Flickr?
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Mark, thanks! Indeed, these were shot with my Nikon D700 at ISO 1600. You can punch through the images to see the full metadata on Zenfolio.
As far as Flickr goes, well, what can I say? I've been tilting at that windmill for a very long time. At some point, they may stop stripping essential metadata, but that day hasn't come yet. 'tis sad.
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hi duncan
nice photos!
i have a little question after looking at the metadata. exposure was the same on all 5, manual, with -1 compensation. did you shoot this way because the lighting was so constant, or is this how you would shoot concerts in general?
(btw: why -1 instead of changing the manual setting?)
i do some concerts/theater myself and usually use spot metering with auto-iso, aperture priority and K-preset WB .. so i was wondering. i just always assumed i would get too many shots wrong in manual with the stage lights changing all the time.
talking of the D700: i find myself wanting a setting to automatically couple AF/AE-lock when using spot metering, and going back to separate AF/AE whet using matrix metering.
do you know of any such setting? is it only me or would that be worthy of a feature request to nikon? :-)
cheers from switzerland
alessandro
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These are outstanding shots. Your skillful use of lighting and colour results in some stunningly beautiful photos.
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James,
I had the fortune of watching TED 2009 live, you're right – it was truly transformational. I used to think of the E part as somewhat less compelling than the T and the D, but this year's performances made me seriously question this conviction. After Natasha Tsakos and Herbie, I think the E has lived up to the cultural promise of TED.
(On an aside, if you're a TED aficionado, you may appreciate a recent pet project of mine – and forgive the plug – called TEDify, operating under the moniker "ideas worth connecting" – an audio-visual experiment of sorts, connecting the dots between TED talks to make the bigger cultural points.)
Again, great post and fantastic photos.
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Alessandro, I noticed the exposure compensation setting showing up in the metadata as well. Since I was shooting manual for the stage shots, the exposure compensation has no effect. I did all of my adjustments to exposure time and aperture as you'd expect. Most likely, I had been using -1 on one of my previous ventures into aperture priority mode shooting the crowd and then when I went back to manual mode for the stage, the setting kept being reported. I can't remember if my Canons had the same behavior or not.
I find I do better with theater lighting if I shoot manual. Sure, lighting is changing around, but for the most part, once you've got an exposure that works for the stage, rolling it up or down by a stop or two is all that's needed most of the time. For me, it's much more predictable than what the exposure meter tends to give me. Using a preset K white balance setting is definitely the way to go for stage lighting.
As far as locking AF/AE in different metering modes, that's something I've not looked into.
Cheers!
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Maria, I was just checking out TEDify last night. Nice work on the video there! And yes, the cultural arts were well represented this year. I don't have much to compare it to as this was my first TED, but boy was it awesome!
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That first shot is absolutely stunning! Nice work, Duncan.
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Great stuff, especially the image of Herbie Hancock.
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Duncan, what a nice shot! I used to be bassist myself and I'm a big fan of Marcus Miller. I wish I was your assistant that night. Going to the technical aspect of photography, are those continuos light or do you have strobes pointing at them to get some kind of cool effect? If so, are the strobes gelled? Thanks! You take great pictures.
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Juliano, all the lights you see are from the stage lighting setup. The lighting was great on the TED stage, especially for this performance. All I had to do was really look for the right angles to really take advantage of it. It was a treat to work in those conditions. If I ever see the lighting designer again, I want to give them a big handshake and thank you. :)
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