This time around we’re talking about photographing a Yelp Grand Rapids event at the New Holland Knickerbocker, another great brewery in Grand Rapids:

How do deal with a beautiful natural light scene that fades at sunset, leaving you with less-than-ideal indoor lighting?

How should you treat guests at the event, and what can you do to get them to relax around the camera?

What should you do when a great photo unfolds in front of you?

Plus, I give a short review of the Nikon D750 (only five years too late) and compare it to the Nikon D7000, my first camera.

And at the end, I talk about the free, open-source photo editor darktable (the lack of capitalization is their choice, not mine), and whether you want to learn more about using a great free alternative to Lightroom.

Thanks for listening to Live Life Creative! Be sure to share it with a friend,
Dylan

P.S. Thoughts about the photographic direction of the podcast? Do I need a new name for the show? Let me know! Send me a DM on Instagram @livelifecreativepodcast

My Notes

• Welcome to Live Life Creative, helping you break down your barriers to being more creative
• I’m Dylan Kraayenbrink, thanks for spending time with me today
• I’ve got a gear update and mini-review on five year old camera, then jumping in to another What I Learned segment, this time from photographing at New Holland Knickerbocker for Yelp Grand Rapids

• Update 
• A few episodes ago, talked about kit, was saving up for Nikon D750
• Bought it, much excite, much better than D7000
• Full frame released in 2014, d7000 crop sensor released in 2010
• Not afraid of shooting up to 6400 ISO if really necessary for events, 6400 not good in the least on D7000
• Fastest SS on d750 is 1/4000, fastest on d7000 1/8000, but d750 can go down to ISO 50, so as far as limiting amount of light is concerned, they’re equal
• Made a mistake, thought that d7000 had Nikon’s flagship control layout, it does not, but at least better controls than the more consumer-level d5000 and d3000 series
• D750 has almost the same layout as d7000, one nice difference is the video record button is near the shutter release, and you can change it to control ISO instead of starting a recording, much easier to change ISO that way
• I’ve had the d750 for about a month as of this recording, like it way better than the d7000
• Won’t be my last camera of all time, but I feel much more comfortable taking paid gigs with this body than the d7000

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• New Holland Knickerbocker is a super sweet brewery in Grand Rapids, and yeah, Grand Rapids has a lot of breweries
• The original New Holland location is in Holland, Michigan, and then they opened the Knickerbocker on the West side of Grand Rapids, and I know they have at least one more location, a smaller space in Saugatuck, Michigan
• Their logo is a dragon, so right when you walk into the Grand Rapids brewery, they’ve got a ten foot tall metal dragon statue, which is really cool
• Include photo of dragon statue

• Another event for Yelp Grand Rapids, this was in a semi-private dining room off to the side near the bar

Very tall room, balcony looking down into it, tall metal wall on one side with art on it, portraits of people, not sure who they were

I went up to the balcony once or twice, some cool top down photos of people having a good time

Natural side light is obviously incredible, from bay of windows half of the tall exterior wall

Great chance to get good food shots

One of my favorite food shots yet, pizza spirals, strip of crust about six inches long with toppings on it then rolled up and baked

Good environmental shot with people in the background, beers and drinks around, beautiful light coming in from behind

Hard to shoot against the backlight

Light pouring in produced blown highlights on the opposite wall, not much to do about that

Always keep an eye out for unexpected things, like one person giving another a birthday gift, or a happy conversation that will produce some good laughs 

Keep a smile on your face, especially when talking to guests, keep an upbeat attitude so they’ll relax in front of the camera, play with you a bit

One girl caught me taking her picture, just laughed

Kept camera at ISO 1600 all night in aperture priority

After sunset, using flash was hard because couldn’t bounce off ceiling (too tall) or off most of the walls (dark wood or brick) 

Could only bounce off the metal art wall when close enough, otherwise used diffuser, not great. Kept turning the flash head to be sure it was bouncing off the wall 

Could have tried off camera flash set up on balcony pointed down, but flash trigger isn’t reliable, although I think I got the trigger to work better more recently

Went on tour around the restaurant, the back bar was extremely dark, low lights, no natural light because it was dark outside

Used a bit longer shutter speed, around 1/80, most of those were blurry but got a few to ensure coverage of that part of the night

Ceiling was shiny gold decorative ceiling, wasn’t great for bounce flash but got a few that way 

One portion of a wall was a window looking into the brewery, which was brighter, got a good silhouette of people looking through at brew equipment

Also toured the brewery production area, just bright fluorescent lights beating straight down, white walls, stainless steel equipment, pretty brutal or at least not too interesting from a photographic standpoint

More interesting if the group were walking around the equipment or doing something other than just standing around listening to Eli the general manager giving the tour

• If I could have done anything differently, I would have liked to rig up my flash from the balcony above the room where they ate, bounce it off the metal wall, and that way have better quality of light from the flash, assuming the wireless triggers would’ve worked
• My biggest takeaway from this night is just how good natural light is when you can get enough of it, and how much of a difference a room goes through when it’s lit just by indoor lights (darker and worse)

• On a different note, on the editing and post-processing side of photography, I don’t use Adobe Lightroom, which is pretty much standard for most photographers
• Instead, I use a free and open-source program called darktable, which is superficially similar to Lightroom and has much of the same workflow tools, but also many differences
• Would you be interested in hearing podcast episodes about darktable and learning about it? 
• I’m even considering making YouTube videos about it, and video kinda intimidates me, but there’s just not a whole lot out there about using darktable which I think is too bad because I’ve found it to be extremely useful
• So if you’re interested in a free alternative to Lightroom, send me a DM on Instagram, @live life creative podcast and let me know

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I’m Dylan Kraayenbrink, breaking down your barriers to Live Life Creative