Alan Brown at the Grand Central, Ponsonby

Mr. Alan Brown

It seems like ages since I've updated my blog, but hopefully I'm back now with renewed vigour!

Last night I went down to Ponsonby to see the Alan Brown Quartet play at the Grand Central.  Usually there's Cherie Mathieson on vocals, but last night we were treated to Leza Corban.  Wow, this girl can sing!

The music was superb, but the light levels for taking photographs was somewhat low, and, to cap it all off, they were using red lights!  It's a couple of years ago now at The Ivory Lounge, Parnell that I discovered the unfortunate effect red lights have when you try to photograph people.  Often I find converting the image to monochrome seems to work the best, and, perhaps adds a little to the shot anyway.  The second image in this post is a monochrome treatment of Leza Corban.

Ms. Leza Corban

As for the other members of the band?  Outstanding!  Thanks to Yuli Quay for filling me in with the band member names.  I hope I spelt them all correctly guys ;-)

There's a few more shots on Facebook of Jono Sawyer, Leza Corban and Alan Brown if you fancy taking a squiz.

Jono Sawyer

Junior Turua

Andy Smith

Andy Smith

Jono Sawyer

Alan Brown

Leza Corban at Orborne Street Bar

Wow!  What an evening!  Leza Corban and the Union Band at Osborne Street.  The light was much better than last week, but still required a reasonably high ISO to keep the shutter speed up around the 1/100 second.  Great performances by the musicians ... Osborne Street's fast becoming the place to be on a Sunday afternoon!

I'd shot Leza the previous week in a different part of Osborne Street and both the colour of the light and its intensity led to some rather disappointing images.  This time, even though the ISO was at and above 2500 the colours were much more pleasing.  Red is a real killer, but the lighter yellow/orange and green/blue combination used this time seemed much better to me!  Perhaps let me know what you think.

Most of the shots were taken with my trusty 50mm f1.8 lens, but I tried a few with an 18-200mm zoom.  This, at f5.6 at the long end of its range is really too slow and I'm boosting the exposure in Lightroom after shooting at ISO 6400.  I really need a sponsor so I can get the 70-200 f2.8 ... then we'll get some nice shots ;-)

I'll close this post with a few shots of the other band members (and a guest interloper).  Don't forget to leave a comment to let me know what you think of the shots, if you want any images and also if you know the names of the various performers.