• Victor Calderone at Space - January 2012 •

Victor came back for a semi-surprise set this past weekend at Space. I noticed at this time of year, the sun peeks through one of the skylights on the Terrace at just the perfect time of morning to give a nice warm characteristic to whomever is on the decks at the moment. So, as you see here, you have Victor rocking the crowd for a monumental set that went until the late afternoon hours. I think he went for twelve hours total…

Click through to see more.

• Creepy man-baby for Emi’s Madhouse at Space •

• Magenta - Space - 2011 - 2012 New Year’s Celebration •

See, magentas are easier to work with. You can see the detail on her skin and costume, rather than a blobby, clipped mess. 

As my small audience knows, I ended up at Space for New Year’s Eve. Prior to that I attended a small house party with some friends for the midnight moment, but then it was off to shoot. It was good to be “home” for New Year’s Eve, for the first time in about five years. Prior years had me dealing with my obligations to the Tiësto camp, as well as last year where I had the inglorious task of babysitting the door for AMG at PURE in Las Vegas. Rihanna was the host and my opinion is that they got ripped off. She just stood there and counted down. But that was last year, this is this year. 

I had way more fun this year obviously. The lighting cooperated thanks to Dennis, Big Mike, and Gabriel, the music was on point thanks to LP, Justin, Patrick, Ivano, and the rest, and the vodka flowed like wine. New Year’s, no matter the jurisdiction, is always ‘amateur night’, as they say. Basically the people who rarely, if ever, go out, tend to go for broke and make messes of themselves. South Florida is no exception, but we have marked advantage of having venues with late (4 AM or later) closing times, and in the case of Space, no set closing time at all, that is fully taken advantage of. 

What this allows for is for the ‘amateur’ crowd to go out for their midnight toast, get sloppy, and clear the way by 3 AM for the more ‘regular’ club crowd to come out and have some fun. Most people I know who had the ability availed themselves of this option. Everyone wins.

Click on through to see the Space madness…

• Blues are more photo-friendly than reds •

Simona at Gryphon. Blues, purples, and magentas tend to be more photo-friendly than reds, from my perspective, as the color gradients are more accurate and less-susceptible to blooming and clipping. Give me blues, magentas, and “UV Pass” (what Martin Light terms a deep purple) every time. Greens sparingly. And turquoise is workable too. Reds, I’ve found I have to really underexpose to avoid any significant blooming. 

Happy 2012.

• Olesya at Space •

I wrapped up the weekend, of course, at Space. Boris was on the decks on the Terrace, and Chris Liebing was in the Loft. Boris, in my mind, is the quintessential club DJ. He’s got the sounds and the ear to what his crowd wants, and he delivers, i.e. he does the job he gets paid to do, without reverting into Top 40 land. Plus, he’s good for the marathon. He went from 3 AM - 2 PM if I remember correctly. 

I was impressed by Chris Liebing. Borderline industrial. 

Click through to see the results. 

• Gio and David Padilla at the Mix Reunion Party •

Remember when DJs used vinyl and had little to no mixing aids? Even a BPM counter was considered anathema. It was a sincere pleasure to see and photograph the Mix Reunion event a week or so ago. The Mix was the last “afterhours” joint on Miami Beach. Many of the world’s most successful DJs played their first US gig there, including Tiësto, Paul Van Dyk, and more.

It was also the first location of my first-ever nightclub shooting expedition. Loaded with six rolls of Fujicolor Press 400 and an Olympus OM-4, it was ostensibly for a photo class over at UM. Intermediate Color Photography (ART 3??) or something like that. Yes, film, and I had to print my own prints. I was a regular attendee of The Mix but this was the first time I ever braved a full-on nightclub with my camera equipment. And the Mix was notorious for saying “No”, and then “No” once again to anyone who asked to shoot, outside of Miami’s established shooters, which at the time, I was not. (Sidebar: it takes time to get established, a fancy camera and a Facebook page aren’t enough…) But one of my friends at the time (Andrae, now the owner of Facet Media) knew Gio the manager, and persuaded him to let me come in and take a few images.

Looking back, the end results were middling at best, but I did walk away with one “classic”.

Yep, on film, and I didn’t scan it in from a negative for a few years. My initial output was using a color enlarger, a cranky RA-4 processor, and Fujicolor Crystal Archive paper, which is still the best photo paper around. Nothing in the world beats an R-print or a Cibacrome. Epson be damned. Go find a lab with a Lambda or Frontier to output your digital files to traditional photo paper.

But anyway, it was my first shoot. Analog top to bottom. David Padilla was only playing vinyl, CDs weren’t allowed. And the mixer was a classic UREI analog unit, and all the amps were analog too, feeding a monstrous multi-brand (JBL & EAW) speaker array, and you could sit inside the subs, they were so big. 

It was quite quirky, and people actually dug the idea of being photographed in a club. From there I was hooked…

So it was really cool to see the old crowd back together for a little reunion. A few missing faces, but the music and crowd bought back a lot of memories. 

Click on the photo of David and Gio to check the results from the Reunion. 

• David Tort at Space •

There’s an interesting quality to the light on the Space Terrace this time of year in the morning. The skylights above the Terrace make the early morning sun almost a neutral color. Maybe it’s the weather, but the light itself cools down from the usual orange-red of sunrise fairly early on. It is like a giant softbox in a way. Oddly enough, before the invention of practical hot lights, and later, strobes, photographers and cinematographers alike had their studios equipped with massive skylights to use natural lighting as much as possible. They had no other option. 

Kind of goes back to my ethos of that ‘there is a lot of light around if you know how to use it’. Flash and strobes are wonderful tools and if used properly, can help generate quality images, but a lot of the fun is working with the light that’s there. In a nightclub, there’s plenty of light. The intelligent lighting, static lights, candles, screens, and indicators can all be used very effectively. And it’s a bit more polite than blasting your flash and blinding 500 people. 

• Victor at Space - ISO 2000 why not? •

Aaaaand I’m back. Sorry for no content this past week or so. You know how it is. 

I got into an interesting discussion the other day with a friend of mine. Obviously over the past couple of years, the commonality of the DSLR has skyrocketed. You can now get yourself a “kit” (body/lens) for well under $1000 dollars and use said kit to generate amazing images on both a technical and aesthetic level. 

It has led to the ubiquity of the “guy with the camera” in nightclubs around the world. Some good, some amazing, and some (well, a lot) just not worth talking about in the grand scheme of things. 

And it’s the latter whom I see lusting for the upgrade, when they barely push the boundaries of their current kit. Now, there’s nothing wrong with wanting that 1-series body (hell, I want the 1DX when it drops in March 2012) but from a practical standpoint I think photographers have to really, sincerely ask themselves if they need an $8000 camera body. And, in the nightlife shooting world, the general answer is a big, fat, “no”, for most people. Including myself. 

I am by no means a well-financed-top-earning photographer. I make decent money shooting, but I still have to do other things (web development and testing) to afford the lifestyle I want. I’m fortunate that I don’t mind doing those other things, they are interesting to me. I think even when I earn the big bucks doing just photo and video work, I’ll keep my hands in the web development arena. Much like I used to do nightclub lighting, but I still stay current on the technology. 

But I’m digressing. Sort of. What I’m getting at is that I’ve always purchased the camera I could realistically afford, without having to eat cat food for a month. Like, way back when, sure, I could have gotten a 1-series body, but at a severe detriment to my lifestyle for a month. Plus I didn’t have the business to justify such a purchase. And also I didn’t do the type of shooting to warrant that kind of body. So of course I opted to stay to the “xxD” line (Canon’s midrange) of bodies. 

And I pushed them to the limit. From my 10D to my 30D to my 50D, I explored the limits of what each body could do. High ISOs? They are there for a reason. Canon determined that the performance at those levels was something useful, and left them in there. So I worked with them and worked with them well. Modern DSLRs, even the cheap ones, have amazing capabilities, and it’s sad to see people barely touch the limits, and even worse, treat the gear as a glorified point-and-shoot. Then suddenly through whatever mechanism, they step up to an MK II or a 1-series, and it’s the same point-and-shoot aesthetic. Run-and-gun, flash flash flash, god I’m blind!

I never balked at putting my 50D to ISO 6400. Sure it was noisy but if it meant getting the shot I wanted, I could deal with it. I read and hear today’s crop of photographers whining about noise. I’ve stated this before, but the noise is nothing compared to fifteen years ago. And my MK II at 6400 is amazing. Last month I lived dangerously and did a few images at 12800 and 25600. Noisy yes, but nothing I couldn’t worry about later. I got the shot, people liked it. “Color Night Vision”, one person termed it. 

What I’m saying is that gear lusting is fine, we all have it, but just look at whatever body you have now. It’s an amazing little piece of engineering. Turn the flash off, put it in manual mode, and push that ISO up to 3200 and beyond if you need to. The best camera in the world is the one you have on you at any given moment, and that’s half the fun. 

And if I see someone with a 1-series body using it as a glorified point-and-shoot again, well, we’ll probably have words at that point. 

Rant over. I’m hungry. I’ll be at the Publix on Biscayne and 48th if anyone wants to take a swing at me.