Lightroom 3 Beta 2 – Shooting in a bar?

Richard Charpentier Arizona, Notes from Rich, Photoshop, Prescott 3 Comments

Last week my friends over at the Firehouse Kitchen suggested I get a few images in their new bar with a full house. Okay, sounded fine by me. Get a few wide angle shots of patrons at the new bar.

After the day ended on Friday I headed up to take a couple of shots.  Almost 7 p.m.  So, it wasn’t super bright in the bar and I had to really push the ISO.  I settled on ISO 2000.  And I knew, there would be noise.

As I headed out, 3 guys I know stopped me and asked for a photo or two of them.  Okay, no problem.  Still, I was shooting at ISO 2000 though, and I knew that when you look close there’d be a lot of noise.  Take a look.

Ah, there you have it everywhere.  Noise.  The back wall, the bartender, and even on Davin.  Noise, noise, everywhere noise.  Fortunately I was able to handle it very easily with the Lightroom 3 Beta 2.

Using a few simple sliders under detail in Lightroom 3 I was able to really deal with the noise in the background.  Now granted, this isn’t my best photographic work, and I haven’t spent any time retouching beyond dealing with the noise, I do have to say, “Not bad.”  Lightroom 3 can handle a lot to be sure.

Beyond the noise…….

Overall, I’ve been more than impressed with the beta version of Lightroom 3.  For me, Lightroom is more than just a starting point in my personal digital workflow.  More and more, it’s becoming the start, mid-point, and finish when it comes to images I work on.  While I feel extremely comfortable using Lightroom I find weekly that I learn another new little trick to improve my workflow and images even more!

As I’ve been experimenting with LR3 I’ve been keeping notes handy.  I’m working up my latest workshop which seems to be needed by many users.  Before going to do the bar shots last week I was with a client at their home figuring out what happened to their Lightroom Library.  Out of 22,000 images (you read that right) 8,000 had gone rogue.  Of course, the client had 5 external drives, and had just added a new one.  Not all external drives were online, and after a while I figured out where the missing images had gone.

The client in question is a professional photographer who does a lot of portrait work.  Figured I should say that before you really started scratching your head about 22,000 images…..

While many folks who use Lightroom love it, a lot of folks get lost when it comes to managing files, knowing where things are stored, and simple catalog setup.  And as the library grows, the issues get compounded.  And that’s a lot of what folks want me to talk to them about.  So, I’ll be doing some stand alone Lightroom Workshops this summer.  With luck, mid-Summer we’ll switch from Lightroom 2 to Lightroom 3!

Speaking of noise…..

One final note on shooting in a bar at 7 p.m.  It’s not enjoyable.  There, I said it.

As a favor to a neighboring business I went up to take a few shots.  You know, to capture the bar when it’s jumping and give an idea of what things look like on a busy night.  And 7 p.m. assured the place would be busy.

Well, as I was wrapping up a couple of guys I know stopped me and asked me to take a shot or two, and you’ve seen the results above.  Just as I was about to say farewell a woman walked up to me, took me by the arm and told me she’d walked over to speak to me.  I didn’t know her, so I didn’t know what she wanted and felt a little odd about her taking my arm.

Well, through her slurred speech I learned that she was concerned about me taking pictures of the bar at the owner’s request.  She told me, “I saw you taking pictures of me and my daughter, and I don’t want any pictures of me showing up.”  Well, I flicked the camera on to sort through the less than 10 photos to show her that I took images far back, and that in fact there were no images of her and her daughter.  They weren’t anywhere in the crowd, and I most certainly didn’t take and images of her and her daughter only.

Nice when you’re a little more than loaded in public and think everyone’s eyes are on you, isn’t it?  🙂

Even pulling up the images wasn’t good enough.  She went further to tell me that she knew I was one of the gallery owners and if she saw her image anywhere I’d hear from her…….  As I explained she wasn’t in a single image the slurring and minor threatening continued with a little pointing for good measure….  Oh yeah, fun for me!

So, if you’ve ever wondered why I don’t hang out in bars, why I don’t write about Whiskey Row adventures and the like, you now know.  I’m not a bar person, and I feel a little awkward around folks when they get past the point of “one too many.”  Think I’ll let the guys know that if they want interior crowd shots of the newly expanded bar, they’re on their own.

Comments 3

  1. While I understand your point of view and perspective, and don’t necessarily disagree, another tack could have been to say she has no right to privacy and that since you were taking pictures at the request of the establishment owner, she has little grounds to argue…would she like you to call the police to discuss the matter further? *evil grin*

    Sorry, but I get uncomfortable in those kinds of situations too, and my problem is that instead of walking away, I push back! 🙂 Guess you took the higher road though, and that is commendable! 🙂
    .-= Jason´s last blog ..Hardware Review: Sigma 4.5mm Fisheye (Circular) =-.

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    Ah, on the high road you normally find cliffs and staggering drop offs, not to mention a rock slide here and there. 🙂

    Another friend sent me a private comment about being followed by a person who thought they were photographed by my friend. Great, they’ll actually chase you down the street.

    You know what gets me? Their thought that they are the focus of your attention. Some ego right there I’ll tell you. What I wanted to say was that I wasn’t photographing her or her daughter. The daughter was spilling out of her outfit in an unflattering and seriously unattractive way (buy the right size next time). Yeah, I really want to photograph that.

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