Ha Ha Tonka is always fantastic, like I mentioned in my last post about them.

This set, aside from being long and including some songs I hadn’t heard before, also included an impromptu guest appearance by some of the Treaty of Paris guys that were in attendance – this whole show had a the feeling of a great party. (more…)

It’s been a while since I’ve a tutorial of any sort, so I thought I’d expand on my one-minute edit and do something a little more advanced. For this, the screenshots you will see are from Adobe CameraRaw and Photoshop CS4 because that was what I had open, generally I would probably do most of this in Lightroom with a splash of CS4 – however, this tutorial does also work for LR, the tools are just in a slightly different format in LR.

This tutorial really focuses on some tools to recover detail and fix color washes. The other night, I was shooting a show that had intense color washes of every color – green, blue, magenta, red, etc. It was hard to meter for, but worse than that, the photos were just flat since everything was a monotone of the current wash color. (more…)

This is yet another set from Q101’s Twisted concert series…. same night as The Bravery and As Tall As Lions.
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Chicago loves Sick Puppies, so it’s always a treat when they make the trek from Australia for a show.

Despite having run into Sick Puppies at Angels & Kings before, I’ve never seen them live. I was missing out, because they are fantastic. Sometimes it’s hard for a three-piece to both entertain and make music that sounds full, like a recording, but they did both. Very talented, and from what I’ve seen of them at A&K, and heard, they’re also super nice, which always makes me like a band even more. (more…)

I’ll take a little break from music photos to share a few free resources that I use daily and have made my life much easier.

The first is Dropbox. Dropbox is a file sharing site/program that allows you to just “drop” files into a folder on your computer to share with others. The files you drop into Dropbox are given a unique link, which you can then share with others. I use it for almost all of the files I need to send to clients, and also use it to share files between computers.

The main reason I love it is that you don’t have to connect to open an FTP program, connect to the FTP, then upload…. the time I save being able to simply put a file in a folder that sits on my desktop is amazing. The other reason it’s amazing is that your files are accessible anywhere… even if the computer you’re on doesn’t have an FTP program, or you don’t have the link for the file, Dropbox has an interface online where you just sign into your account and can access your files. Try it out here!

The other resource I use constantly is Signature Confirm. Signature Confirm is an online contract-signing service. You create your own contract and then email it to your client via Signature Confirm. The client can then review the contract and electronically sign it. I especially love Signature Confirm for my live music work because, so often, it’s practically impossible to meet up with the band before or after the show to get a signed paper contract. Getting the contract signed online before the show makes the day of the shoot much less stressful. You can sign up for Signature Confirm here.

I hope my little informative interlude has helped point you in the direction of some fabulous resources. If anyone else has any online services that they use and love, let me know!