Hello and welcome to Out of the Darkroom on
AdoramaTV. I'm Ruth Medjber and today I'm
back chatting to music photographer Carrie
Davenport.
So Carrie, can you tell me a little
bit about what's in your bag when you go
and shoot. Like it different from when
you go and shoot a gig to you go shoot at an
event or wedding?
Yeah but of a mixture. I've accumulated
quite a lot of stuff over the years so
at the moment I have a D750 which is the,
kind of the backup camera. I would use it
for smaller jobs like PR and events and
things like that because it's not as heavy with
great resolution so it's great to carry
around and tenth D4 would be my main
camera that I love and can’t bare to replace.
even though I keep telling myself I'm
gonna get a new one. The D5? Yeah.
I'm on the D4s and I just, it's my baby.
I love it, this is the thing it never
misses a shot. Now it's a big heavy beast
of a camera like but i
absolutely love it and then lenses
would vary from job to job. So generally
if its like events music and stuff like
I'll bring a couple of telephoto’s. So
the 24-70mm f/2.8 that I use all
the time. It's really bright, really fast
and then the 70-200mm that probably every
music photographer has that I use all
the time as well, again f/2.8.
Then for the weddings and the portrait
jobs I have quite a few prime lenses I'd
use. So it would be a 35mm Sigma Art Lens actually
that I absolutely love it is
brilliant, it’s great. Got the 85mm Nikon and
then a wee 50mm for music gigs as well.
The f/1.4, the wee nifty fifty. That was the
entry to if you're gonna do this properly you
need the 50mm. Everybody has it and then I keep
breaking flashguns, I seem to
drop them all the time so I’ve gone through 3 or 4. So I’ve got
a couple of the SB9-10’s, it’s all Nikon gear
that I would use and then anything else
that I need I kind of tend to hire. You
don't really tend to, like 300mm and 400mm
lenses I would you so rarely that I
don’t, they're really sort of not worth it
so I kind of rent. Would you like consider
a tele converter and then to give you
the reach??
I got one, I did get the two times one. I
don’t really like it, I find it softens
the images a lot and it cuts it down to about f/5.
Which is a bit on an issue it does cut down.
At festival’s you're fine because
you're outside
but in lower light it's not great. I;m
not really, I think I maybe just don't trust it,
maybe that's it.
It's like it's a cheap kind
of step. It definitely softens the images
down. I find on the D4 it's not quite as
noticeable on the D750 because you got
the higher resolution. It's really
noticeable it really knocks it badly. So
it's kind of, I used it a couple
of times then just left it in the
camera bag. It just sits there.
Yeah, okay. Well that's good to know
anyway, I'll take it off my list of thing to buy.
You can have mine. Great send that down to me.
Then so say you're doing band promo
shoots.
What kind of, would you use natural
lighting? It varies a little bit actually.
Natural light if I'm outside, natural
light if I can use it.
Good olde reflectors, the big massive
reflectors. Love those bad boys they’re great and
then I have like a Bowens kit as well. I tend
to use a fairly simple
lighting setup because normally you
don't have a lot of time to set up so it's
usually just a couple of soft boxes
and then, I like playing around with my color gels
and thing like that in the background so I have a few
backdrop and I would do stuff like that as
well. I bought a smoke machine in a fit
of random madness which I've used once.
I have a smoke machine and every time I go to use
it it just kind clouds everything and I’m like
why am I using this. They're so pointless
because it clouds everything out and then they set the
smoke alarms off and then you have to
leave.
I’m sticking with it, I'm determined to get some.
I got one really nice image with it and I
was like that. Some people use
them brilliantly, I just haven't mastered it
yet. Smoke grenades are good, the one you
get for like war games like,
they're pretty good I’ve used those a couple
times and they're good. They’e fantastic.
They're great. Tell us after you've taken
all of your shots and what's the process
then, do the bands and do getty
get a whole contact sheet of images?
No, because the turnaround times are
so fast for them they just get you to
edit down pics. So it’s usually about 10
per gig up to about twenty, if it's a festival
ten per band max and then depending what
the event is they will give you a rough kinda
idea of how harsh an edit they want. Alright.
I’ve been working for then for a while kinda know
that they want a few close-ups, a few
general shots, anything interesting
that's happening. They do a really nice
thing called alternative view, which is
like if you can get weird angles on
things or behind the scenes things like that as
well, so they're quite nice.
Kerrang! that I work for a lot they
would be, they would have contact sheets.
They would be very strict edits as well. Full contact sheets?
Yeah, full contact sheets and pick what they like
but again they want you to edit it down first.
That's a big part of it I think for
people, especially anyone starting
photography is editing as a massive part
of it don't put everything up. Like cut
it down to your best because you don't
need 300 photos of a gig and they look
like an animation. You know
what it’s like, if you get a really good gig and
the lights are class looks and it looks amazing you'll
shoot loads because you get really
carried away because there is loads to take photos
of. So it’s kind of editing it down
afterwards and obviously in three songs there is
only so much you can get but you can
still do rightly with a camera that shoots 11
frames a second.
But I find that I would tend to
edit stuff down using bridge.
Oh Bridge! Then bring it into Lightroom, is
usually. I love Ligthroom,
absolutely love it. So your workflow goes
Bridge, Lightroom and then do you export to
Photoshop? I usually try and get it as
close as possible in Lightroom. I tend to
sort of try and shoot as close to what I
want as possible so I don't have to do a
lot of editing afterwards because I find
that it’s the time of the computer,
is it's the finishing process but it's
never quite as enjoyable being stuck at
a computer for hours. Yeah you want to get it in
cameras so you don't have to be photoshopping
bits. You don't want to be relying on it.
You'll never make a bad photo good, no
matter how much you use photoshop and how
good you are at it. You want to be gettin it
right first time, even if it is like I
find that because it's digital I think
people are but more lax sometimes about
that and I don't think it's a good way
to do it because you're never gonna make
something great out of something that
you like going to fix this and fix that,
do that. I think you're ever going to learn
either like if they're lighting is wrong
in front of you, change it. This is it you can
see it on the camera so you don’t have light meters all to
worry about now, if you don't need to.
You can just look at the back of the
camera and there's nothing like you know
if the lighting is wrong
you're not going to really be able to
fix that too much, if you’re
casting bad shadows and things like that
you're not taking that out.
So I would tend to, Lightroom I find because
you can batch process. So I will go through
and do all the sharpening and there's things
that I tend to do. I usually, most stuff I shoot quite
quite high contrast so I'll generally tend to
apply that to everything and then go
through and then individually edit. I'm a
bit of a control freak. I just have to do
them all myself.
I can’t have anybody else try it like. I
don't think that's been a control freak
you just being really cautious of your
work. Well this is it and it’s just
part of the process. If it was
negatives I'd been doing it myself so
it's the same kind of thing.
I then just export out to whatever I
need to suit sort of things. So Lightroom.
I did use Photoshop for years
and then because I knew
what I was doing with it I sort of stayed away
from lightroom for a while and then once
I got the hang of it, it took a bit practice just
absolutely loved it. Lightroom,
it's a dream. I
wouldn't airbrush people, I think it's
better you look like yourself rather
than this kind of weird cyborg esque.
With no complexion at all, I don't
really like it, I don't tend to.
I get people asking all the time about it.
Ah will you make me skinny?
Like no, you don’t need to be.
There not models they're musicians and
documentary work. This is it. When you
photograph bands most of them are hiding behind a beard anyways
anyway so it's not really an issue like
you know. Beards and microphones .
I’ve had to take out a few black eyes, that’s about it.
Carrie listen, thank you so much for chatting to
me today. My absolute pleasure. It was a dream. Thank you so much.
Well that's all we have for this episode,
I hope you enjoyed the show. If you'd
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Thanks and I'll see you again soon.