Band Photos

These photographs are selected from some band publicity shots that I did in late February. I am cleared to show them now that their new album is about to be released. My interest and involvement with the Sam Weber band springs from my son being a member. Mercifully they make very nice music that I am more than happy to listen to. In fact, I have an advance copy of their new album Valentina Nevada playing while I write. If interested, for the few remaining days before the album release all the songs can be heard at this link. After that I think they go to the first parts of the songs. There is a good interview with Sam, including a couple of solo acoustic versions of the new songs here.

Since there are a lot of shots involved I will do more than one post. I had trouble deciding how to organise them for posting, and in the end decided to go by setting, mixing images from the different cameras used. This post is from the waterfront at Harling Point in Victoria. Some images from the shoot are converted to black and white because I like them better that way. Because Sam prefers colour shots so I did not use black and white film for this project thinking I could always convert them later if needed.

For the shoot I used a Canon Elan 7N loaded with Portra 400, a Canon Elan IIe with Portra 160, a Mamiya M645 Super with Portra 400 and Fuji Pro 160 and a Fuji Instax Mini 8. I shot three rolls with the 7N, two with the IIe, three with the M645 and one pack with the Instax. I had an Olympus mjuii with expired film in my pocket as well, and took a few shots, but they are really colour shifted and duplicates of better shots from other cameras. The choice of cameras was dictated by getting reliable high quality results suitable for publicity shots. The Canon bodies could share lenses (a 50/1.4 and 16-35/2.8), and the Mamiya because it is larger format which gives more flexibility with cropping, and has excellent glass too (55/2.8, 80/2.8). The Instax was mostly because I had found it for $10 in a thrift store the day before and wanted to try it out, but the aesthetic is of interest too.

Over the past couple of years I have made a few posts at 52 Rolls of the Sam Weber band in concert and studio – they can be found at this link. And of course there are lots and lots more at my blog (here). This abundance is not just because I am a proud father, but because they give me access to interesting photographic challenges that I might not otherwise get (that’s my story and I am sticking to it). Theirs are the only concerts I have shot live, the only recording studio shots and the only publicity shots of any type that I have done. So thanks to them for helping me spread my photographic wings a bit!

 

 

 Click on any image in the gallery to view larger and navigate with the arrows.

 

 

 

Roll 16: Canon Elan 7N and Mamiya M645 Super both with Portra 400, metered at box speed.