Formal and informal band portraits at the Dublin Irish Festival

Behind the scenes at the Finale, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

This is a photo from backstage at the finale on Sunday evening. The Elders were about to go on for their number and so I asked them to pose for a group shot.

I also worked with two bands for some group portraits and gig shots. Here's one of the band portraits I did for The Ladies of Longford:


A band portrait for The John Whelan band with most of his 12-piece band:


And a smaller group:


And a duo with Flynn Cohen and John Whelan:

The John Whelan Band

The John Whelan Band, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

This is one of the band portraits I did for John Whelan at the 2012 Dublin Irish Festival. Outdoors in full sun - a very challenging combination. I used my Canon 580 EX speedlight for fill, which worked fine at this close range. Manual exposure settings were also used.

The real challenge was the background. The Dublin Rec Center pond was full of scum, which is not very photogenic. Thus, I opted for a high key effect, processed in Aperture, Nik Software Color Efex Pro, and final adjustments in Photoshop CS5.

John Whelan and Flynn Cohen

John and Flynn, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

I did two band photo shoots at the Dublin Irish Festival this year - The Ladies of Longford and the John Whelan band. This photo is from the latter. In addition to doing group portraits of the band, I did some small group combos. John and Flynn play gigs together and this is a photo for their press kit.

Making lemonade

Trinity Stage, a photo by andiwolfe on Flickr.

What does a photographer do when the lighting on a stage is very challenging? Convert to monochrome, of course. This is a portrait of a young girl (Haley) who did a couple of tunes with the John Whelan band on the Trinity stage, Saturday night at the 2012 Dublin Irish Festival. The garish lights make for some terrible color photography, but the bright red, orange, violet, and blue lights can be an asset when doing monochrome conversion.

I mentioned in a previous post my processing steps for this style of photography, and it really is a nice effect for low light in the red spectrum.

Music at AAW 2010 - Andi Wolfe, John Whelan, and Flynn Cohen

Thursday evening's entertainment for this year's AAW symposium was capped off with an amazing performance by John Whelan and Flynn Cohen. I joined them for the first two sets, and then again at the end. Here are the first two sets, and another one in the middle.


Jigs and a reel: Garden Castle (original tune by Andi Wolfe), Boys of Ballylochland, Cliffs of Mohr, Farewell to Ireland.



Hornpipes and some fancy dancing by Terry Martin and Jacques Vesery