Griffin House & Charlie Mars @ City Winery, NYC – 2.20.11

Long time no post! Things have been hectic with me, which has resulted in going to less shows lately. I moved to Jersey City so that’s finally out of the way. The first show since living in JC was Griffin House and Charlie Mars at the City Winery in NYC, off Varick St. I’ve never been to the City Winery before but I hope I get to go back soon!

I already wrote about the show at ReadJunk.com, so I’ll just be going over other things here. But getting back to not going to shows lately. I usually don’t go to shows during the winter but that’s probably going to change since I’m closer now, I just hope there’s not too much more snow. I plan on shooting The Pogues show on March 15th, and I would like to see DeVotchKa or Billy Bragg end of March as well but not sure I’ll get those shows or not. There’s a Carbon Leaf show in April that I’ll probably be at, since I can’t miss a show of theirs. Other than that, not too much going on as far as shooting goes. Maybe someone will send me on assignment? Who knows!

But back to the Griffin House/Charlie Mars show. Griffin was nice enough to put me on the list with a nice spot towards the back, dead center. I had a nice spot to see the stage and shoot throughout the show. I didn’t know the protocol at City Winery with shooting. I guess cameras were allowed, but I didn’t want to walk around and cause a disturbance with people. So I just sat in my spot and tried to get some nice shots of Griffin and Charlie.

Since it was an acoustic show, the two guys just played in their chair and didn’t move around a lot. I didn’t want to constantly snap away like I do at some other shows, so I just shot when I felt the need to. When it comes to shooting singer-songwriters, it comes down to quality over quantity. The lighting was nice and bright, just the way I like it. I used the 70-200mm f2.8 practically the entire time, but I used my other wider lenses for Griffin at points as well. For Charlie, I just used the 70-200mm f2.8 since I didn’t think the other lenses were good from where I was sitting. I wish I got closer to the musicians but that’s okay, I got the shots I needed. This show was basically just to see some great musicians play, and take some pictures every once and awhile. I needed to remove the rust from myself since the last show I shot was back in August. But glad I went to this show on a Sunday night and especially glad I didn’t have to drive an hour and half back up to Middletown, NY. Those night-time drives were awful.

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Tags: 70-200mm f2.8, Charlie Mars, City Winery, Concert Photography, folk, Griffin House, music photography, new york city, nikon d300