Local soul and blues singer Tad Robinson, a five-time blues music awards nominee, threw a party Friday at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis to mark the release of his latest CD, "Back in Style."I'd photographed Tad in February at a more intimate show at Eddy's Neighborhood Bar and Grill at Geist when the ensemble was just Tad and keyboardist Kevin Anker. But on this night, Tad had his full band -- including a two-piece horn section -- and they put on a spectacular show for the partygoers.
Lighting was not the greatest; I alternated between my Canon 50mm f/1.8 and Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8, while using ISO levels of anywhere from 1600 to 2000 (with the "nifty-fifty") to 3200 to 6400 with the Tamron. Shutters ranged between 1/80 for the slow numbers to 1/250 when I used the 50mm. A noise-reduction filter in post-processing helped remove a lot of the noise.
But as it turned out, the limited illumination availed me to exploiting some dramatic lighting, especially for images I chose to copy as black-and-white conversions, as I hope you'll agree from the examples shown here. I also shot a 7+-minute video in HD during a blues number in which Tad did a short harp solo, and his guitarist, Paul Holdman, had a prolonged solo. Problem is ... the video is 2.44 GB, and blogger won't allow uploads of any single video exceeding 100 MB, so I can't include that in the post. But it was of very high quality (even better than these stills!)
To see a more complete gallery from the stills shoot, follow this link: Tad Robinson at the Jazz Kitchen.
