I shoot most of the images on my camera in the Nikon .nef raw format to keep as much information as I can, but shoot them on the black and white setting on my camera. It helps me concentrate more on the photos composition once I’m comfortable with my lighting. I also print and show mostly black and white photos so I like to have that feedback instantly.

The above photo was taken of Conner and Phoebe of The Bellville Outfit during their acoustic session in the campgrounds. Conner’s got quite the head of hair that he uses to create a stage presence from behind his piano. I used a bit slower shutter speed on the photo to catch just a little motion blur there and, as a bonus, got a bit of blown-out light highlight across Phoebe playing the fiddle.

Some of the photos from their set turned out great and I’ll have them, along with others, on my photography website in the next couple of weeks when I finish up everything.

Darrell Scott finished up the weekend with a mostly solo set on the main stage. The sun was low, about dusk, and was in that window we photographers call the “magic hour.”  During that time I’m usually running around backstage shooting the musicians playing in small groups together, sitting in the grass warming up, etc.  However, with Darrell being the last act of the festival and so well respected by the other bands, almost everyone was under the tent listening and watching.

I used the low sun coming through the white tent and used a higher ISO to “blow out” the tent and try to take away the texture from it and get a nice clean background. I added the old photo edge in photoshop, but am torn between the white or black versions of the edge.

To cap everything off we also got a new puppy shortly after the festival. Waking up at all hours of the night to take the little guy out for the bathroom, cleaning up the carpet during the day when we missed him looking for the bathroom, and everything else that goes into taking care of a new puppy has taken a lot of time.  Even with all of the photos that I’m working to process, I’ve found time to take plenty of pictures of the little guy. The one above is from his bath last week.

I hate using on-camera flash; it makes things look flat and usually throws some harsh, unflattering shadows. But in the laundry room there wasn’t time or space to do anything fancy. Every once in a while I just have to take the camera and shoot the moment. However, I did use the commander mode and dialed down the flash to use it more as a fill rather than the photo’s entire light.