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August 20, 2014

Better Than Ezra at Tysons Corner Center

Summer Concert Series

Personally, this was an exciting assignment for me – covering the 94.7 Fresh Artist Concert Series at Tysons Corner Center. Better than Ezra has been putting out hit singles since I was in college. Their songs had a sound that I identify with that time in my life. I looked forward to hearing them perform live! Before they took the stage, they had a meet and greet with some fans that won the chance to see them and have their photos taken. What I did not know was that all the members of the band have a great sense of humor! The fans that met them up close had a good time with their antics, and they made for some great photos. Visit the Tysons Corner Center Facebook page to see all of them!

Better-Than-Ezra-meet-and-greet-©TimeLine-Media

When they took the stage, they did not disappoint! They sounded terrific in the Plaza. With the sound setup, the reverb off the buildings, and the singing from the crowd it was a nice evening of music. I always wonder what songwriters think when they take the stage in front of a crowd of people that have not seen them before, or in an area that they do not visit often, and the audience knows all the words and melodies of a song. This is a composition that started as a unique thought in your head, and through the modern distribution of communication and media, it is now a collective memory over so many!

Better that Ezra played all of their recognizable hits along with their new singles. “A Lifetime”, “Extraordinary”, “Good” – it was awesome to hear live, and I really had to remember to keep taking photos! Two more Fridays will have concerts in the series, so be sure to get your wristbands at Tysons before they are gone!

94.7-Fresh-Artist-Concert-Series-©TimeLine-Media

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August 15, 2014

Event, Music, Photography | 0 comment

Lindsey Stirling at Tysons Corner Center | Virginia Music Photographer

Like most of her fans, I was introduced to musician / performer Lindsey Stirling from her amazing videos on her YouTube channel. In fact, please go there to play one while viewing this post. To play a violin well is an amazing skill on its own. To do it as effortlessly and technically well as she can while moving her body as much as she does is amazing! She did not miss a note while throwing her whole body into her performance.

The Plaza

All of this as a visual performance was not just for show. She used movement as a way to convey the feeling of the song to the audience. The intensity with which she played the instruments was infections. Additionally, she used her facial expressions to connect with the crowd. Amazingly, she kept the energy up for the entire performance! Even a more mellow song like John Legend’s “All of Me” carried the attention of the Plaza. Concurrently, People were watching and singing with all the focus that they had for her upbeat and louder songs.

Lindsey-Stirling-at-Tysons-Corner-Center-©TimeLine-Media Lindsey-Stirling-at-Tysons-Corner-Center-©TimeLine-Media

94.7-Fresh-Artists-Concert-Seriesr-©TimeLine-Media

It was a great challenge to get good photos of her while performing. She is so fast in her movements, I pushed up my ISO to higher levels so that I could keep the shutter speed from blurring her movements. The organizers of the concert made a nice pit area that I could use to get closer to the performers without disrupting anyone’s view from the audience. The sound setup really blasted out the volume in the bass which really brought the intensity to a new level especially if you only listened to her songs on a computer or smartphone. This made an impact, and makes me want to see her perform again soon!

Lindsey-Stirling-at-Tysons-Corner-Center-©TimeLine-Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

August 14, 2014

Event, Photography, Technology, Travel | 0 comment

HDR – Deghosting | Tech Thursday

Tysons, Virginia

I received some questions about this photo from a few post ago:

HDR-SilverLine-in-Tysons-Corner-©TimeLine-Media

This was a high-dynamic range (HDR) photo from the Metro platform with an incoming train going through the frame. I really did not know if this would work at the time I took the images. For HDR, you need to make a series of exposures that differ in shutter speed. This will create a range of images that vary from underexposed to overexposed. Using the bracketing functions built into the camera, you can set this up in camera.

Using the very fast motor drive of the Nikon D4, there is very little difference in the composition of each frame. For the most part, you would not seen much differences except for the moving train cutting across the middle. This is what you need – the composition should be as similar as it can in each of the bracketed frames. With this in mind, the software can align each individual image for processing.

Post Processing

For this particular set, I brought the bracketed images into Photomatix Pro 5.0. After you export the images from Lightroom to Photomatix, you are presented with a Deghosting dialog box:

From the initial preview, you can see that the train is a mess. There are many different versions you are trying to stay, and the software is trying to put all of them into the combined image. To clean things up, you need to drag the “Deghosting” slides on the top left all the way to the right. This is the “Very Strong” setting. Then from the set of images below, select which of the bracketed photos you want to select as the master or source file that will take precedence over all the others. I chose the 1/160s one because the train was just starting to come into the frame. and you could still make out many of the numbers at the top of the train.

Photomatix-Very-Strong-Deghosting-selected

After selecting ‘OK’ you have a much cleaner file to tone map to your final HDR image in Photoshop. This is an extreme example, but it will work if you want to clean up moving people in an image, or anywhere that the preview HDR looks too muddy or blurry. Give it a try!

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703-864-8208

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Tysons, Virginia

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