RETRO REVIEWS
Retro Review: Steely Dan – The Royal Scam
My first exposure to Steely Dan was through the 1985 compilation A Decade of Steely Dan that I got when I was probably 13 or 14 upon the recommendation of a former bass teacher. I was in full grunge mode, listening almost exclusively to Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Alice In Chains, et al.. Still, I was beginning to have my mind opened to fusion via Weather Report and the more jazzy side of rock with Chicago and Steely Dan. It's safe to say that I was probably one of the few young teenagers wearing a Nirvana shirt with a flannel over it while singing along to Deacon Blues in my room.
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Behind every photo is a story. Read the stories behind some of our favorite photos, how we approach photographing and editing and much more!
Before / Foxy Shazam
Not only do I enjoy their music, but they are super fun, albeit a bit challenging to photograph as well. They use lots of fog and heavily saturated backlighting with minimal front light. That can make for a lot of trial and error in the pit as the brightness of the lighting can vary drastically moment to moment. My approach to a show like this is to start by figuring out the settings for the darkest moments I’m trying to capture. My goal is usually to keep my shutter speed around 400 or higher and my aperture at f4.0 or higher and then figure out the lowest I can set my ISO and still get usable photos. I do this because, as I mentioned previous Before/After posts, I’d rather have noise than motion blur or too shallow of depth of field. Once that’s set I try to keep my aperture the same and only roll my shutter speed to adjust exposure. By doing that, I’m able to focus on only changing one setting through the whole time I’m shooting...
