From Beale Street to "Down Under"
I surprised Leah several weeks ago with tickets to the Keith Urban show. We didn't really jump on tickets way back in February or whenever they went on sale, and although there were probably tickets in the nosebleeds available via conventional outlets (i.e, Ticketmaster), we just didn't really make it a priority. She even made the comment, "If I get his new CD, I won't say anything more about going to the concert." And I got to hand it to her...she kept her promise. One day I was perusing the internet for tickets to see how much it'd set me back if I were to get them. Places like stubhub (which is just a centralized and specialized place for people to sell their own tickets at the cost of a 15% fee or something) had them for like $120-150. EACH. No thanks. So I checked eBay. Seemed that for whatever reason, I could virtually get them for face value. Now that's more like it. I actually happened upon a guy from Missouri who bought them for his wife for Valentine's only to find out she had another valentine. At least, that's what the auction says.
So anyhow, we started with a dinner on Beale at Pat O'Brien's. It was good, but clearly the kitchen cannot handle the pressure of 1) large crowds, and 2) non-hostess led, seat-yourself seating. And this was a hour and a half prior to show time. Oh well.
The concert was great, and Mr. Urban put on a good show. Behind the stage was a HUGE screen that was sometimes showing live video of him or the band (a la the big screens at church or the Jumbotron at the stadium), other times it was showing music video type scenes or even some creative montage of colors or whatnot. I couldn't believe the clarity and brightness of the live images, and I don't know a lot about digital and hi-def tv and all of that, but the images on that thing were spectacular.
Shooting pics in an environment like that are indeed a challenge. First off, a flash does no good because the range of a standard flash is about 10 ft. Secondly, the camera is most likely doing its best to analyze light conditions and adjusting itself accordingly, which might not always work. And if you manually open the aperture to allow for more light, your image then becomes more likely to experience blurring if you and the subject aren't totally still. Lastly, when you zoom in too much, you lose clarity with a typical point and shoot camera--this is why pros have to use a zoom lens that's 2 feet long and requires it's own tripod!!
Anyway, enough of the photography lesson. Here are my favorite pics from last night. I also shot a 1 minute .avi file with my camera, but it's currently 100 MB and YouTube might laugh at that, I don't know. This my first foray into digital video online, so if there's a video editor something that will allow me to make it smaller or shorter, let me know! Steve, you the man, so call me and we'll go into the Russell Production Studio!
So anyhow, we started with a dinner on Beale at Pat O'Brien's. It was good, but clearly the kitchen cannot handle the pressure of 1) large crowds, and 2) non-hostess led, seat-yourself seating. And this was a hour and a half prior to show time. Oh well.
The concert was great, and Mr. Urban put on a good show. Behind the stage was a HUGE screen that was sometimes showing live video of him or the band (a la the big screens at church or the Jumbotron at the stadium), other times it was showing music video type scenes or even some creative montage of colors or whatnot. I couldn't believe the clarity and brightness of the live images, and I don't know a lot about digital and hi-def tv and all of that, but the images on that thing were spectacular.
Shooting pics in an environment like that are indeed a challenge. First off, a flash does no good because the range of a standard flash is about 10 ft. Secondly, the camera is most likely doing its best to analyze light conditions and adjusting itself accordingly, which might not always work. And if you manually open the aperture to allow for more light, your image then becomes more likely to experience blurring if you and the subject aren't totally still. Lastly, when you zoom in too much, you lose clarity with a typical point and shoot camera--this is why pros have to use a zoom lens that's 2 feet long and requires it's own tripod!!
Anyway, enough of the photography lesson. Here are my favorite pics from last night. I also shot a 1 minute .avi file with my camera, but it's currently 100 MB and YouTube might laugh at that, I don't know. This my first foray into digital video online, so if there's a video editor something that will allow me to make it smaller or shorter, let me know! Steve, you the man, so call me and we'll go into the Russell Production Studio!
posted by Eric C at 8:36 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home