Underfound (Feb)

So one of the events that I cover is a live hiphop show in Croydon once a month. The idea of this event is to make a platform for artists to showcase their skills, get some stage time and possibly make some fans. It is in the same family as Musique (another company that i have worked with for about 4 years now) which does the same thing but for the singer/songwriter side of things. The location is BoxPark Croydon. They have a bar towards the back of the area in which this event takes place. While it does have a lot of room it has pretty low celins and columns that really get in the way so the POV for shooting can be pretty limited. I have been working on the best way to light the stage without casting light (shadows) onto the performers.

I used to take light stands with me to this event. While this is good from some events, music events have a lot of people in the place where you will set the lights up. Drunk people dancing are always a worry for all photographer when you have your gear out there with them. I found out that the house lights that you can see in the images are coloured LED so I asked and they could be changed. Normally they are red and that can be a really pain when editing so i asked them to turn it blue for a more pleasing light and that really helped with Jans images but there was something missing.

About a month ago i got some super-clamps from Amazon (image below and thats a link as well)

I clamp two of these on the columns with bear lights on them and I have a 3rd light that I tend to carry with me but this time I gelled it with a red gel and placed it on the stage, first behind the artists and then to the left hand side of the performer pointing at the ceiling. The outcome was really pleasing and I think this might be something that I will do again on the next event.

With a mix of the coloured lights (What a friend of mine called bisexual lighting) combining with the naked lights on the clamps I found a really nice balanced light with coloured lights in the background to make a really nice set of images. Feel free to check out the Underfound Insta page and show your support. Catch you next time guys