Andrew St. Clair

When I shot Darwin Deez a few weeks ago at Bowery Ballroom, I met the band Friends, who mentioned to me that they were on a bill with a very buzzworthy Oh Land (a.k.a. Nanna Øland Fabricius) and that it was going to be a fun show. For some reason, I thought that the show was taking place on the March 4th, but I was wrong. But thankfully, I got in to the sold out show.

I got to the venue early enough to get some portraits of Friends and beat the crazy line to get it. The lighting was not very bright at all, so I ended up bouncing a flash off of the ceiling. For the most part, I think it did its job.

WIth Icona Pop, there was a green light that was bring projected onto the stage and directly onto the two singers faces. Since I was bouncing the flash and not pointing it directly at the performers, the light from the flash didn’t overpower the green light. Looking at the pictures on the computer, I found that light to be distracting. So, I ended up making many of the pics black and white.

Thankfully, the green light was turned off for most of Oh Land’s performance. Then, for the last 2 songs, I made my way through the very very crowded room and stood behind the stage on a stairway.

Oh Land’s handler graciously granted me some time with her to take some portraits backstage and asked me to wait hang out for 15 minutes as there was with a crew also taking some pictures of her.

When I returned, I saw a 3 man photo team shooting her with a Hasselblad H3D-31II (an $18,000 dollar camera) complete with a portable lighting set up, and a laptop with Capture One where the images were showing up instantly and looked fantastic. Now, some photographers only carrying a Nikon D300 with an SB-600 flashgun might have been intimidated. Well, maybe I was a little, but I quickly shook it off and simply took a few photos of her in the hallway. I took a couple test shots, liked what I was getting, and didn’t take more than 2 minutes of her time… which I think she appreciated. “Wow, you are fast, I like that!”

That’s what she said ;)

So, you can see portraits of Friends and Oh Land, and the rest of the coverage over on BrooklynVegan.com