Photography in a Recording Studio

Spotlights, Mike Stands, Wires and Silence.

It's a wet and drizzly Tuesday evening as I lug my three cameras, several lenses and two tripods through a small side door of a building on the outskirts of Boston and immediately find myself in the middle of a recording studio crammed with musicians, mikes, mike stands and wires stretching across every square foot of floor. First job is to get myself introduced which is no mean feat as these guys are focused. They have but a couple of hours to learn, and then lay down, a very important track for singer songwriter Les Sampou and they are not about to break concentration.

Still obtained from HD Video at ISO 1600

The track is a winning song in the 'Life in Years" project which asked over 350,000 talented songwriters from around the world to write a song for a compilation CD being created to raise funds for a really great cause: funding a foster care program for the elderly. (As I grow older it becomes a cause ever dearer to my heart). You can find more details at:

http://www.m4ac.org/LifeInTheYears

Selected from entries from Australia to Iceland, India to Trinidad, United States to the United Arab Emirates, all over Europe and everywhere in between Les' song, 'Age is just a State of Mind', will be added to the compilation CD alongside songs by the likes of Carly Simon, Natalie Merchant and John Prine.

Find Les Sampou at: http://www.LesSampou.com

So there I was, standing in the doorway, arms full of equipment wondering how the hell do I walk across the studio in the midst of all this activity without doing some serious damage. Visions of knocking over mike stands, getting tangled in wires and worse still, hitting someone with a tripod, loomed very large. My job this night was to shoot the event for posterity and despite my arriving five minutes early it seemed everyone was in full swing.

First job was to assess the lighting. Here was a complex mish-mash of tungsten and florescent lighting with several spotlights bouncing off glass booth windows, shiny sound baffles. and the reflective chrome of the mike-stands. I was really after some atmospheric shots so I really didn't want to resort to using flash if at all possible. The lighting was dim, so choosing a high ISO setting seemed a good possibility. I decided to try a few shots at ISO 1600 to see how the Canon 5D Mark II would cope.

Next came the choice of lens - a tough one this, in such a small space I needed something with a wide angle but I also needed to move in close so I didn't want to choose a lens that would be prone to distorting the musician's features. In the end the lack of space won out and I was forced to choose the 17-40mm IS Lens.

Available Light at ISO 1600 gave unnaceptable results.

Using just available light and the camera at ISO 1600 the image quality was reasonable but not good enough. I had a quick re-think and went for the on-camera speed-light with a Gary Fong Whale-tail Diffuser ( http://www.garyfong.com ).

Canon Speed-light and Gary Fong Diffuser was better.

This provided a much more even light and enabled me to reduce the ISO setting to 400.

Now all I had to do was get around the studio during the rehearsal time and get the shots I needed before the recording session started in earnest. During the actual recording there needs to be silence from the camera (any click will be picked up on the recording) so time was of the essence. The Canon 5D Mark II did have one trick up its sleeve though:

During the recording itself I cranked the ISO up to 1600 and managed to find a tight space in a corner where I set the camera on a small tripod and left it recording in HD 1080 video. It was practically silent and I was able to pull a few stills from the resulting video, including the opening shot above.

The rest of evening flew by with the guys from the Wolverine Jazz Band doing a great Job backing Les's wonderful vocals. I had time to hang out for a minute or two with Steven Friedman, master technician and owner of the Melville Park Studios:

Steven Friedman, owner of Melivlle Park Studios http://www.melvillepark.com

Sooner than anyone expected, the whole thing gracefully came together, and the lyrics and melody that had been echoing around the studio was expertly captured and melded into a cohesive first take.

Listening eagerly to the first take

A few minor tweaks and a couple of alternate endings later the final cut was made. Having shown their remarkable talent in picking up a new song and laying down a track in record time the Wolverine Jazz men started to quietly pack up and say their good nights; but not before they presented me with their CD entitled Journey, which provided me with more of their wonderful music for the drive home. Two weeks later I'm still driving to it!

You can find more details on the band at: http://www.wolverinejazzband.com

The band is: