The Best Kind Of Blues...

Added 1491028492 by Ace.

A client shot for the jazz/blues band Blues Potential. The gig was in a workers social club, a bit run down with signs and notices everywhere. The only lighting allowed was the club's normal lighting. These working conditions were much the same as the jazz dives of the 1950s so I decided on a similar B&W approach and burn to black as much of the tacky background as I could.

Technicals: Ambient light, 1/60th, ISO 3200, 66mm on 24-120 lens at f4. Using a D810 at high ISO gave me a noisy image which looked better in B&W.

All the editing was done in Lightroom. A dark vignette knocked back a lot of the messy background and then used dodging and burning tools to reduce any distracting highlights so the viewers eye is led to the subject's face. The process brought back memories of working in an old fashioned wet darkroom!

Digital noise is a little too regular so to randomise it, 10% grain was added which gave a more analogue feel to the image. I added a subtle brown split tone to give me the warm black tone which was popular in that era.