Pickerill Creative: Doni Flanigan at "The Roxy"

Some of you know that the last few years has seen me become a massive country music fan. In fact it's almost all I listen to these days. So, when I got the chance to photograph Doni Flanigan at the Roxy I jumped at the chance. Oh yeah, and he opened for Justin Moore, who I happen to be a huge fan of!!!!

The show was tougher to shoot than I expected. The Roxy's stage lighting sucked! I mean it was really terrible. I knew it was going to be dark as all small club's are but their stage lighting was offensive. I mean it just looked absolutely terrible. Then, they would blast this ultra red light every couple of seconds, and there was consistency to amounts of light they were throwing either. I shot on Manual and was constantly adjusting my exposure.

Another Lesson I learned: Always bring at least one flash and one all purpose lens! I didn't get a lot of info about the show so I came prepared to shoot only the actual show itself. As soon as I arrived Doni's manager pulled me backstage and gave me a list of shots to get. Oops, I only brought a 70-200 lens, no flash.... "Ok, keep calm, pretend like you wanted to used this lens," I told myself. It was so dark I could barley make out any details with my naked eye. And you know the old saying, "if your eye can see a gallon of light, your camera can see a teaspoon."

I sat down, braced my back against the wall (to minimize camera shake) and well, sometimes you just get lucky. This was one of their favorite shots...

1/50 - f/2.8 - ISO4000