After The Sun

The first post..... in a way it kinda reminds me of the first day in college, where you're new at the place and you don't know what you're doing, if it's gonna work out, if people actually pay attention to you or if its gonna go alright. Luckily for me it did work out, but that's for another occasion. I've always been intrigued by the idea of blogs and having one. Even though I pretty much never had the time to do one but fortunately, things change, so eventually I had to start sometime, so here it goes.......

I've reached the point where I'm having lots of photoshoots, either for personal stuff or for buisness purposes, anyways I had a shoot the other day, it was for a local band here in Puerto Rico, Despues Del Sol (After The Sun), couple of friends of mine play there and they asked me to take their Promo shots and I agreed. I have to say that it went well, though it would've gone better, if the hotel we went would've let us shoot there longer, but I better not fast-forward everything there, I'll start the with night before when I got a call at 9 or 10 pm, from one the band members, telling me when we were leaving. (the band decided to leave at 7:30 am, which is a little early for this kind of shoot but since we had to pick a couple of the guys from the band in different parts of the island then it was the perfect time) 7:30 came and I hopped in the van and went on. I had a couple ideas for the shoot but one of them really fit their new image, thus the hotel location came up, most of the shoot was to take place inside the San Juan Hotel in Condado. The lobby had a 16th century feel to it, It looked like the insides of a mansion kinda like the movie Amadeus, where people walked around in wigs and women with the big dresses, the chandeliers and everything but with a modern touch, like the Casino Royale hotel in the James Bond movie. I just wanted to avoid all those cliche places that most bands pick, abandoned fields and houses, and wanted to shoot at a place where there was some nice natural light scenarios and a place with strong colors to work with, so the hotel was perfect.

Once we had everybody in place, I found out that another photographer was joining us and we had to go pick him up, at first I was a little thrown off guard, I knew who he was but only on a "see you once in I while way", its not that I can't work with other photographers at the same shoot but just because I knew little to anything about him, the way he shoots or the subjects he shot, I thought it was going to be a long and difficult shoot. But in the end he was pretty good to work with, had good ideas and his shots really impressed me. Anyways once we got to the hotel it was already 1:00 in the afternoon, which kinda worried me because of the number of people in and out of the hotel at that time but surprisingly the lobby area was pretty clear of commotion. The lobby was pretty big, which kinda surprised me, front desk by the long hallway and besides it were two bars complete with chandeliers. But amid all the awe of the room we set everything up and started shooting.

About 5 minutes into the shoot hotel personnel starting to linger around back and forth looking and watching our every move. I knew we were about to get kicked out so we started going around the big lobby trying to decide the order of the locations inside the lobby we would use beforehand so that we could move faster. Afterwards we had to go by the shoots in pretty quick fashion. Which in a way hurt the overall feel I was trying to achieve. 20 minutes in, the head of security came just as I was getting ready to shoot my final individual shots, since the other photographer was just finishing his at that moment, and told us we had to leave. The band was pretty pissed off and so was I, we had this idea of the shoot and we really didn't achieve it. Once out, I started reviewing my shots and saw that I had some good ones even after all the rush and short time through the shoot but I still didn't have what I wanted.

So we got on the van and headed out to a bar called El Batey in Old San Juan, which is one of my favorite bars to go. The place has a really psychedelic vibe to it, looking around the place its kind of the Puerto Rican CBGB'S but much smaller and without the stage. The walls are all written with different colors to the point where it looks like one big acid trip. Anyways, we got there and I asked the owner if it was ok to get a few shots in there, to which he had no objection. Finally, I thought, so I hit the jukebox and to the tune of Led Zeppelin "Since I've Been Loving You" I divided the band members so that the other photographer could get his ideas with a couple of them and went to work. After the individual shots I asked the band if they wanted a more specific shot, they told me they wanted to more group shots, one was under a single ceiling light bulb in one of the rooms in the bar and the other was outside in the bathroom area which was outdoors. For the outdoor shot I told them I wanted to do it in HDR (click here for a definition/tutorial by StuckInCustoms) but having all five members stay completely still for 5 shots was nearly impossible since some were kneeling down and others were simply standing, nonetheless, the shot got ruined. So by then it was already 6 pm, I had my shots and we were done.