School of Rock! School of Rock!
As a photographer, I got my start in the industry by photographing a lot of live music. As a musician myself, I'm seemingly, and obviously, drawn to a live performance. I very luckily got linked up with San Antonio Broadway Theater last year when I was asked to shoot some promo photos for their Rock of Ages show, which was incredible! I then photographed one of the rehearsals leading up to the show and then photographed the dress rehearsal. Since then, I've worked closely with SABT and have photographed a number of their productions. The latest being School of Rock, which was a riot!
I would say photographing these shows brings out my favorite parts about being a photographer. I get so lost in the moment, that I'm like a jazz musician, anticipating the next moment and drawing back to past experiences that worked and didn't work. With photography and live moments, you only have the split seconds to make decisions, no 2nd chances, so you have to trust your muscle memory to make the right decisions. It's almost this flow state where time doesn't exist and you become one with the camera.
Camera nerd talk -- for this shoot, I used my 2 Sony a7iii's, this also marks their final use in my career, as I have since upgraded to the Sony A7IV moving forward. On those cameras I had the 24mm-70mm 2.8 G-Master II, and the 85mm G Master I. Now, moving forward, I will use the 24mm-70mm & a 70mm-200mm. Unfortunately, when asked to shoot this show, I didn't have my 70mm-200mm lens with me. In fact, I'd sold my former copy that was for my Leica SL2. So, I had to make do with the 85mm, and honestly -- it held up quite well! Further, when photographing this show, I shot the full show in Manual mode, and set my ISO to auto & would use the over/underexposure wheel to darken, or lighten the scene in my camera. However, by the end of the show, I had found the right ISO moving forward and was basically shooting between ISO 100-400. My shutter speed bounced between 1/125-1/250th and I kept my F stop at 2.8 on the zoom, and I found that my photos were sharpest on the 85mm at F2. When shooting wide open on the 85mm, I found that the images were either too soft, or just not as sharp as I would have hoped for. I edited the photos in Lightroom; however, I think I may edit the photos in Capture One moving forward. I've been kind of bouncing between the 2 editing softwares, trying to find what works best for me, but it's been a bit of a journey.
Thank you for reading this blog! Enjoy some of my favorite phots from the show!














