1st post

RWA
Originally uploaded by Ry's-pics

This is the first image in my blog not because I feel it best represents me, or because I think it is a great image, but because this image came very close to looking the way I had imagined it would before pressing the shutter. I hear photographers talking about the creative gap, the gap between what you want your work to look like and how it actually looks. For me this gap is huge.
I'm a hobby photographer and have been for years. I have only in the last year started to take photography more seriously, and by that I mean that I have been active in trying to grow as photographer technically and artistically . I have come to terms with the fact that I have to better learn digital post processing now too to become a better photographer. I try to shoot daily and I try to put my self in assignment type situations as much as possible. The image above is from one of those very situations.
I had been asked to shoot some live shows for this young metal band called Red Wire Army and have since helped them fill there myspace profile with some decent performance images. These guys are seniors in high school, they are young, talented and driven and before there last show I asked if we could do some promotional type portraits. Going into it I knew I wanted to start simple, even typical, five young metal heads standing around looking like metal heads. I wasn't trying to break any molds, just form a vision and complete that vision.
Our time was limited and our first set up was short lived when a security guard told us we were not allowed to shoot in the locations I wanted. After becoming frustrated and growing shorter on time I decided to just start throwing a couple of radio triggered speedlights on the ground and shooting some direct hard light. After a couple of peeks at the lcd I decided the affect was decent for the subject. It gave a nice hard look to the band. I then thought that I wanted them to be backlit and I wanted it to look like they were looking into a cars headlights. I set up the speedlights and hopped up onto a dumpster and took just a few exposures.
Although my original concept was vague, and I had just planned on walking city streets to find a cool looking location, there was a point were an image popped into my head, and to the best of my recollection this is that image. Now, it's nothing special, and I am in no way close to were I want to be as a photographer but for brief moment in closing that creative gap I have become even more driven to improve.