David Griffin Photography

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Category Archives: SMAC

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Stone Mountain LIVE with Bill Kirchen

March 8, 2010 – 12:19 pm

Saturday’s Stone Mountain LIVE show was subtitled “The Guitar Gods” show and it was almost more like sitting in on a roots guitar master class than a regular night out on the town.  The Stone Mountain LIVE house band is headed up by Duke Levine and Kevin Barry, two very fine guitar players.  The band is rounded out with Sonny Barbato on keys, Richard Gates on bass, Billy MacGillivray on drums, and Chris Cote on vocals.  Most folks would be happy if they just played all night — but they keep inviting great guests, the most recent being Bill Kirchen.

Bill Kirchen is often referred to as an “elder statesman” in guitar circles.  He’s a master of the Fender Telecaster and is best known for the song “Hot Rod Lincoln” when he was with Commander Cody back in the 70’s. (I can still remember listening to that on the radio on the Giannetti’s back porch.)  Honky-Tonk and “Dieselbilly” is the corner of roots guitar music that he is the master of and putting him on stage with Duke and the gang was to watch pure genius at work. Bill is also one of the nicest people you could meet — quite the ambassador for Austin, Texas.



Bill performs his version of “Hot Rod Lincoln” that includes a medley of musical vignettes that is simply jaw-dropping.  He and the band effortlessly recalled the riffs of (in order): Johnny Cash, Duane Eddy, Roy Orbison, Johnny Rivers, Marty Robbins, Buck Owens, Merle Travis, Merle Haggard, Bob Willis, Hank Sugarfoot Garland, Earl Scruggs, Iggy Pop, The Ventures, Bo Diddly, Chuck Berry, Elmore James, Muddy Waters, Howlin Wolf, Alvino Rey, Stevie Ray,  Freddy King, BB King, Albert King, Ben E King, Billy Jean King, Elvis Presley, Cream, Deep Purple, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Sex Pistols, and Jimmy Hendrix (and I’m sure I missed a couple of them).

When I photograph live music performances I try to do two things: 1) capture the emotional power of the performance from the audience’s side, and 2) get a glimpse into the what goes into the performance from the artists’ side – those quick glances between band members, the look of concentration as they work through a song, and the smiles when they just know it is “coming together”.

For the first half of the show I was taking the audience perspective, but for the second half I shot mostly from just off-stage providing a more intimate set of angles and, for my money, much better lighting (Carol even had a “hair light” now and then!)

I hope you enjoyed seeing some shots of these “guitar gods” in action.   I think Bill is now an honorary Stone Mountain Boy (he should consider moving up to Maine for the summers — it gets hot down there in Texas!)   A gallery of close to 70 images from the performance is available at:

[url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SML-Mar-2010[/url]

Here are a few more of my favorites shots from the evening:






My thanks to Carol and Jeff at the Stone Mountain Arts Center, and to Bill Kirchen and all the performers for allowing me to photograph the show.

By Dave | Also posted in Photography | Tagged , , | Comments (0)

Stone Mountain LIVE Christmas 2009

December 21, 2009 – 5:34 pm

Photos from the December 19th, 2009 Stone Mountain LIVE Christmas show. This was one of 5 shows that spanned two weekends and are the final Stone Mountain LIVE shows for 2009.

More photos from the evening can be found at: [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SML-Christmas-2009/[/url]

Special guest performers for this evening were the Burns Sisters, from Ithaca, NY. Marie, Annie, and Jeannie Burns sang a number of holiday tunes – some familiar, some not.

The Stone Mountain Boys were in fine form with a number of powerful instrumental interludes. Here Duke Levine, Kevin Barry, and Richard Gates jam on a holiday song behind a sea of mike stands. (Also performing, but not pictured are Sonny Barbato on piano/accordian and Billy MacGillivray on drums.)

Chris Cote, the Stone Mountain Boy’s vocal powerhouse, belted out some exciting and hilarious holiday tunes.

Carol, Chris, and the Burns Sisters performing “Blue Christmas”

——–

Technical: Canon 40D at ISO 1600 with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS handheld. Exposures were typically 1/60 to 1/40 second, wide open at f/2.8 — and these were generally underexposed by at least 1/3 stop. Canon 1D Mark 2 at ISO 1600 with a 24-70mm f/2.8L handheld. Exposures centered around 1/60 second, but varied more than the telephoto shots.

By Dave | Also posted in Events, Photography | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Stone Mountain LIVE Portraits

November 1, 2009 – 11:25 pm

Every month or so the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine hosts a concert with some of the best musicians around.  October’s show was on Halloween night and there was certainly a bit of fun with the theme (it also provided the perfect context/excuse for numerous death ballads…)  Special guest for the evening was Kathy Mattea, accompanied by Bill Cooley.  Also sitting in with the Stone Mountain Boys, direct from Ireland, was Frank Gallagher.   I’m privileged to have permission to photograph these shows.

Photos from the show can be found on my SMAC gallery page.

The SMAC stage isn’t brightly lit, so photography is always a challenge.  Through a combination of planning and good fortune I was able to move a bit during the show (normally I’m very much stuck in one spot) and that allowed for some angles I’ve never been able to shoot from before.  (With all of the music stands, it was the only way to get pictures of some of the band.)  During my review of the photos from the show a number of them were calling out to me to live as black and white images.  Some worked in both color and black&white, but for a few the presence of color was just a distraction.

A few of my favorite portraits of these wonderful artists in action are here and you can see the full set (just over 20 photographs): Stone Mountain LIVE Artist Portraits

I hope you enjoy this slightly different take on the evening’s performances.

That’s Duke Levine and Kevin Barry at the top of the page followed by Duke’s Telecaster.


By far my favorite photo of the evening was this picture of Frank Gallagher playing the violin.  Bill Cooley’s guitar caught my eye.

Kathy Mattea and Bill Cooley.

Kathy Mattea and Chris Cote.

SMAC’s owner and host for the evening, Carol Noonan.

As always my thanks to Carol for allowing me to photograph the show, to the SMAC staff for sitting me in my preferred perch, to the band and artists for a great night of music, and finally to Kathy Mattea for her kind permission to photograph her performance at SMAC.

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Stone Mountain LIVE – August 2009

August 20, 2009 – 10:21 pm

20098-385-1775

This was the 3rd Anniversary of the Stone Mountain LIVE show at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine, and I was privileged to both photograph the show and produce a retrospective video that was played at the beginning of the evening.  The special guest performer for the show was Mary Chapin Carpenter, who asked to not have her photos posted.

A complete photo gallery of the evening is available at [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SML-Aug-2009[/url] and photos from other shows can be found at [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com[/url].

Joining Carol Noonan on stage were the Stone Mountain Boys (Duke Levine, Kevin Barry, Sonny Barbato, Richard Gates and Billy MacGillivray with Chris Cote providing the vocal fireworks).  Also performing that evening were Katy Noonan, Consuela Candelaria-Barry, and Eric Royer (the Guitar Machine guy).  Here are a few photos from the show.  Technical details follow the pix.

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20098-263-0081

20098-263-0090

20098-263-0130

Technical drivel:

With the exception of the wide-angle shot (handheld with a Canon 1DMk2) all of the shots are a Canon 5DMk2 mounted on a fluid-head tripod (basically rigged for video shooting), a 70-200 f/2.8 lens, 1.4x TC at times.  The ISO was either 3200 or 4000.  The shutter speeds are 1/60 – 1/50 second as I was switching between shooting images and shooting video.  (If and when I do this again I will likely preprogram one of the 5D’s custom settings to be optimized for shooting at SMAC so I can then switch back to manual mode at a higher shutter speed).

For the past few shows I’ve been shooting some limited video as well as stills — theoretically one of the great advantages of the 5D and similar cameras.   Of course the reality of doing this is much more than just clicking on the movie mode — stabilization, tracking, and focusing on multiple subjects is much harder for video.   Compounding the problems is that having the tripod and whatnot forces me to the back of the room — twice as far as I am normally from the stage (with probably a 2-stop drop in EV — somewhere in there)…   I *knew* I should have purchased that 300mm f/2.8 back when I had a “real” income…. :-)

As always the Lightroom processing is pretty minimal.  Some have minor exposure tweaks.  The vertical shot of Kevin Barry has both exposure (1/3 stop) and fill (+20) because the band only gets indirect stage lighting along the wall and I tend to lock the exposure down for the main performers.

I have to admit I had a frustrating time with the video… again.  Despite having the nice HoodLoupe gizmo on the back, critical focus is still hard to ascertain for a live performance.  Part of this may be exacerbated by my eyeglasses and perhaps I should try using the Loupe with my naked eye (cranking that diopter adjustment hard).   A magnifying viewer would help the videos, but not my bank account, so we’ll wait it out a bit longer.   When taking video of set subjects, the 5D is actually easier to focus than my video camera.  The 5X zoom makes it simple to locate and lock in focus.  Unfortunately you lose this ability as soon as you start recording… (which has me thinking hard about trying the Magic Lantern firmware, which I think lets you zoom in while recording)

By Dave | Also posted in Lightroom, Photography | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Stone Mountain LIVE – July 2009

July 8, 2009 – 10:11 pm

There are two routes to the Stone Mountain Arts Center for us: Route 153 through Eaton, NH (by our friends Tim and Bobby at the Inn at Crystal Lake) or take Route 160 past Kezar Falls, ME.  For this trip we chose the latter and having a bit of spare time and an almost interesting sky we stopped in Kezar Falls to see if the aforementioned falls were being photogenic.  Not really, but the building right next to the hydro station had its share of character.

The full set of photographs of the show are available at [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com[/url].  A number of videos were also shot, and I hope they will start to trickle out as I get approvals/permission.

Stone Mountain LIVE’s special guests were Cheryl Wheeler and Kenny White.  Cheryl is a powerful songwriter, but Kenny simply wowed everyone (his song “My Recurring Dream” brought the house to it’s feet). We purchased their respective CDs and listened to them on the way home.

Technical drivel after the photos….







Within the constraints of being as unobtrusive as possible, I try to build on what I learned from the previous show to make the next shoot even better.  I shot video with the Canon 5D Mark 2 and the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens mounted on a tripod and the Libec H38 fluid head.  Because of the dinner layout I was again at the back of the room, so for the second set I tossed on the 1.4X teleconverter.  With the new HoodLoupe (see the earlier article on that little gizmo) I found it much easier to do the critical focusing tasks (even though I still managed to muck a few of them up… practice, practice, practice).

I recorded audio in both the camera and with an Edirol R-09 sitting on the shelf next to me.  Since I was along the wall the stereo imaging of the recording leaves a lot to be desired.  I also really need to move it AWAY from where I am because I was shooting stills with the 1D Mark 2 during the videos and the shutter release was quite audible because I was only a 2 feet away from the mic.  I ballparked the levels for the audio and guessed wrong — they were set a little too high and when the music got loud it was clipping  I’m sure the little clipping light was flashing madly, but it is on the FRONT of the recorder which is facing AWAY from me when recording so I didn’t notice and, frankly, there wasn’t an easy way to check.  That might be an advantage of the Zoom H4 — I think you can reposition the built-in mics.  Keeping the mic away from the video camera is a good idea too — there’s plenty of little noises like the stabilizer and shutter flaps.  I’m working my way up to getting a feed from the mixing board.

I fed the separately recorded audio into GarageBand, tossed some compression and EQ on it, and  it sounds pretty decent (except, of course, for the clipping) — far better than the AGC audio from the 5D’s built-in microphone.

In the “you can never have too much storage” department – I purchased a 16GB card for the 5D and chewed through it in the first set.  The fallback was a set of 4GB cards which had the annoying habit of filling up in the middle of a song…  Sigh!

By Dave | Also posted in Photography | Tagged , , , , | Comments (0)

Three Stone Mountain LIVE videos

June 21, 2009 – 9:39 pm

Three, no, four* videos from the June 6, 2009 Stone Mountain LIVE performance:

“Leavin’ On Your Mind” – Carol and the Stone Mountain Boys
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mxDVDuriHiA[/youtube]

“Ten Year Night” – Lucy Kaplansky
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8q48kD9Blo[/youtube]

“Born To Be With You” – Blackstone Valley Bluegrass
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPdIy89BWRY[/youtube]

“I Dream of Jeannie” theme song – The Stone Mountain Boys having a bit of fun with the Lowrey organ
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_BNG7EkEGI[/youtube]

Technical: Filmed with a Canon 5D Mark 2, 70-200mm f/2.8L lens, on a Libec H38 video head. Manual exposure: ISO 2000, 1/30s, f3.5, 3200K. This was my first major video project with the manual exposure capability in the 5D firmware and it was a joy to use!

5D footage was converted from H.264 to ProRes 422, edited and graded with Final Cut Pro, then exported via Compressor to H.264, 720p, 5MB/s for YouTube HD (actually the “Leavin’ On Your Mind” was accidently exported below 720p, so only shows up as high quality, not HD).

* Updated on 25-Jun to include the Lucy Kaplansky video. Many thanks to Lucy for giving us permission to make it publicly accessible.

By Dave | Also posted in Video | Tagged | Comments (0)

Stone Mountain LIVE – June 6, 2009

June 11, 2009 – 9:08 am

It was a busy weekend!  We were in Boston all day and then we drove up to Brownfield, Maine for the June Stone Mountain LIVE show hosted by Carol Noonan (above).  We arrived a few minutes late, but managed to catch most of the show, including special guests Lucy Kaplanski (a wonderful folk singer from NYC) and, from just down the road a bit here in Central Massachusetts, Blackstone Valley Bluegrass.  The stage was rounded out with the regular house band – The Stone Mountain Boys (Duke Levine, Kevin Barry, Sonny Barbato, Billy MacGillivray, and Richard Gates).

A full gallery of images from the show are available at: [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com[/url]

I shot some video there as well, but it will be a few days before that gets through the work queue here in the office.

We were back home a bit after 2am — which was good because I had a 7am shoot in Concord on Sunday morning…  Ah, life in the fast lane!





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Giant Kings Videos

May 14, 2009 – 10:10 pm

I’ve uploaded two videos of the Giant Kings performance at Stone Mountain Arts Center to YouTube.

1) A “highlights” reel from the 9-May show:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCJxQepJhMs

This video starts off a bit shaky (OK, very shaky) because I hadn’t set up my camera supports and the “trombone” bit was too good to pass up even if it induces seasickness when watching (I plastered a few stills in there to make it less annoying..)

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCJxQepJhMs[/youtube]
2) I have also uploaded the “I Found a Love” video to YouTube (with Mark’s Earley’s name spelled properly in the credits (sorry Mark!)  and with better color correction):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqWR_Drh3EQ

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LqWR_Drh3EQ[/youtube]

Both are available in YouTube’s new HD format, which, I have to say, isn’t all that bad at all.   If you have a fast connection it is definitely worth pushing that little HD button because the default format YouTube uses is pretty awful.

Technical drivel:

All shots are with the Canon 5D Mark II. The highlights reel inadvertently shows how lens selection and support makes all the difference in the world.  The initial shot (Chris Cote’s “trombone”) is the 24-70mm f/2.8 L lens shot completely handheld.  This lens has no image stabilization and while I’m actually pretty good at holding a camera steady for a still shot, eventually the muscles have to move.   As the highlight reel continues you will see the 24-70 being used on a monopod.   This takes some of the harsh erratic movements out, but it still looks pretty unclassy at times.  After the intermission I changed my seating and switched lenses with my 1D, so now the 5D had the 70-200mm f/2.8 L IS lens on it.  This is a stabilized lens that works pretty darn well on the monopod.  Zooming and panning from the monopod are still something I need to practice more, but overall the results are much more watchable (at the expense of not being able to zoom out to the entire stage).

All footage is converted to Apple ProRes 422 for editing.  I had dropped in some stills into the highlights reel (as a band-aid over the jerky footage) and used them as a basis for color correction of the video.  The edited footage was compressed to H.264, 5Mbps, and uploaded to YouTube (smack in the middle of their outage earlier today, which made the whole experience just tons of fun.)

And yes, I did try running the FCP SmoothCam filter over some of the handheld footage.  I played with the SmoothCam settings quite a bit actually and rendered out a few tests.  None were satisfactory, so I’m taking my lumps with the raw footage.

Why YouTube vs. Vimeo?  1) Vimeo only allows 1 HD upload per week unless you pay money.  I don’t currently produced enough video to warrant the subscription, so it’ll be Sunday before I can upload the next video.  YouTube doesn’t seem to have such a restriction.  Fortunately they both ingest the same formats/bitrates/etc.; and 2) Videos are much more “findable” by the masses on YouTube vs. Vimeo.  The purpose in making these was to promote the band, so it makes sense to make the videos available as widely as possible as long as the quality doesn’t suffer too much.   This was my rationale — we’ll see if it was a good decision or not.

By Dave | Also posted in Video | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Giant Kings at SMAC – Video #1

May 11, 2009 – 8:10 pm

As promised in an earlier post, I have a video from the Giant Kings show at the Stone Mountain Arts Center.  This is Wilson Pickett’s classic song “I Found A Love”.  The band invited the center’s owner, Carol Noonan, up to the stage to join in the fun.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/4600260[/vimeo]

The Giant Kings are Duke Levine, Chris Cote, Paul Ahlstrand, Mark Earley, Kevin Barry, Marty Ballou, and Andy Plaisted.

The best way to find when the Giant Kings will be playing next: visit Duke Levine’s MySpace page.

Technical drivel:

Recorded using a Canon 5D Mark II with a 70-200mm f/2.8 IS L lens.  The camera was on a monopod. Exposure compensation -2/3 stop.  Audio was from the camera (next time I promise to plug in a real microphone — although that has its own problems).  Filmed with automatic white balance and corrected in Final Cut Pro  (I have a preferred color balance setting in Lightroom for SMAC stage photographs and need to try dialing that into the camera to see if it will work right out of the camera.)

By Dave | Also posted in Video | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (1)

The Giant Kings at SMAC

May 11, 2009 – 12:47 pm

The Giant Kings, the brainchild of Duke Levine and Chris Cote, and a regularly seen band around Boston (Lizard Lounge, Precinct) rocked the Stone Mountain Arts Center on Saturday night applying their prodigious talents to classic R&B, soul, and roots rock music.

Duke was kind enough to give me permission to photograph the evening and a gallery of photos from the show can be found at smac.dmg-photography.com.

I shot some video with the 5D Mark 2 and I will post that in a upcoming article.

Here are the Giant Kings, L-R: Mark Earley (baritone sax); Paul Ahlstrand (tenor sax); Kevin Barry (lap steel and guitar); Duke Levine (guitar); Chris Cote (vocals); Andy Plaisted (drums); Marty Ballou (bass):


Chris is a remarkable vocal talent (and, like all good frontmen, a bit of a ham).  Here he’s doing an amazingly good job of handling the trombone solo for the song (there’s a bit of rough video for that coming as well).


Technical drivel:

Photos were taken using a Canon 1D Mark II at ISO 1600 and a Canon 5D Mark II at ISO 3200 (most of the time).  The 5D served double duty and shot video a good chunk of the time.  Lenses: 70-200 f/2.8L IS and the 24-70 f/2.8L  (and definitely not stabilized).  Most shots are handheld, but some were taken with the monopod.  (Video from the monopod is marginal, without it it is downright useless if you don’t have a stabilized lens.  Heaven knows I’ve tried.)

By Dave | Also posted in Photography | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)
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