Nicole - in the Recording Studio

[Manfred M]

I'm reworking a few images I took for a friend of my oldest daughter. He was a member of a now defunct band while they were working in a recording studio, putting together an album.

This is Nicole, who was the band's keyboard player and singer.

[Manfred M]

Just in case anyone was wondering, you can see my lighting setup in this image. Studio light on the camera left side with a medium soft box and a medium white reflector on the camera right side.

This is my "go to" light set up. The recording studio is located in the basement of an old house and is quite small.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Manfred, technically a nice shot and good to see the light and reflector.

My thoughts were...
I found the row of buttons peeking over the rear edge of keyboard distracting.
Also that her pose suggests Nicole is listening, yet she's holding the headphones, not wearing them.

Sure, I suspect the room also had speakers, but I have a 'thing' about inexplicable poses.

She could just be pondering what to play next of course, I have to accept that.

I hope these thoughts don't seem too frivolous.

Dave

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred, technically a nice shot and good to see the light and reflector.

My thoughts were...
I found the row of buttons peeking over the rear edge of keyboard distracting.
Also that her pose suggests Nicole is listening, yet she's holding the headphones, not wearing them.

Sure, I suspect the room also had speakers, but I have a 'thing' about inexplicable poses.

She could just be pondering what to play next of course, I have to accept that.

I hope these thoughts don't seem too frivolous.

Dave

Thanks Dave - The buttons on the keyboard were done that way on purpose to give some context and to break up that large gray mass of the keyboard. I did have the Yamaha logo, but found it too distracting so I removed it by cropping.

There were three instruments, each recorded separately; drums, a bit of a strange guitar and the keyboard. The drum and guitar tracks had been recorded a week earlier and the vocals were done during the following week. The reason the headphones were off is that the recording engineer was commenting on how the recording went; yes there were external speakers for playback.

As you can see by the shot, the room was tiny. Both the keyboard and guitar pickups were captured directly into the recording computer. There is a fairly large, separate, sound isolated room on the the camera left side of the recording engineer. The drummer was the only one who actually had his work picked up by microphones.

You can see the size of the room and how little space I had to work with; all shots were taken at 24mm on a FF camera.

[Wandjina]

I think it is a great shot Manfred and thank you for the second shot showing the lighting set up. My only comment, and I am being picky, is I would have liked to have seen a small gap between the headphones and the chin, thereby exposing the whole chin. But as I said, I am being picky.

[Manfred M]

I think it is a great shot Manfred and thank you for the second shot showing the lighting set up. My only comment, and I am being picky, is I would have liked to have seen a small gap between the headphones and the chin, thereby exposing the whole chin. But as I said, I am being picky.

Thanks for your comments, Martin.

Being a documentary shot (all this work was being done at a live recording session), I did not pose any of the images. These are all candid shots.

I don't mind the positioning of the headphones as they are a "prop" in the image and none of the key facial features (especially the mouth) are covered. I am more concerned with the face being deformed by the prop in situations like this one. In this case the touch was light enough and the headphones were positioned to ensure no deformation can be seen.

[pschlute]

I like it. Maybe the light and dark behind her and below her are distracting, but she is in her element, and that works.