Thursday, December 24, 2015

Superstition by Keely Whitney with CJQ at Shuga Jazz Bistro

Keely Whitney belts out Stevie Wonder's Superstition with the Chris James Quartet.
John Morton playing guitar with CJQ including James Clark on bass, Wade Reeves on drums, Wayne Ledbetter on sax and Chris James on keyboards.
At the Shuga Jazz Bistro in Renton Washington December 17 2015.


Sunday, December 20, 2015

Keely Whitney with CJQ at Shuga Jazz Bistro December 17, 2015

One of the best of the Northwest's top talents, vocalist and entertainer Keely Whitney guested with CJQ at Shuga Jazz Bistro Renton WA December 17, 2015
CJQ is Wade Reeves on drums,
Wayne Ledbetter on saxophones,
Chris James on keyboards,
James Clark on bass
John Morton on guitar.
The evening's set included seasonal favorites.
















Sunday, December 13, 2015

3D Alto Saxophone rendering

Creating this sax in a 3D animation application to use in promo artwork for the band Nearly Dan.




James Clark with F3 at the Central Club in Kirkland WA

James Clark with F3 at the Central Club in Kirkland WA.
F3 is James Clark on bass and vocals,
Terry Davison on guitar and vocals.
Gary Thompson on drums and backup vocals.



























Thursday, December 10, 2015

F3 Playing Crossfire at The Central Club Kirkland WA Dec 9, 2015

F3 is James Clark on bass and vocals,
Gary Thompson on drums,
Terry Davison on guitar and vocals.

Video shot using an Olympus EP5 with an Oly 20mm F1.8 lens.


Friday, December 4, 2015

Postprocessing Photos shot using the RAW file output format

This sequence of three photos shows the initial file and the final product.
Photo taken with a Canon 6D full frame body using a Canon 135mm F2.0 prime lens.
I tend to try and not use iso settings higher than 5000 to avoid excessive noise but fortunately the Canon 6D has excellent high iso performance and is about as good as you can get for the dollars spent.

Using this photo shot of Darelle Holden, Michael David Marcus and Matt Jorgenson
with the goal of isolating Darelle for a pseudo portrait treatment.
Sorry guys!

The first file shows what a RAW image looks like straight out of the camera sensor and with no processing applied from within the camera.
There is plenty of overblown red/magenta tonality thanks to the stage lights being set to magenta color tone and the glossy red walls also  reflecting a lot of it.
Exposure on this shot was just about as far as one could go without blowing out the exposure of Darelle's face.

This next photo shows the first step of correcting a lot of exposure, white balance and color details,over 50 parameters of adjustments.
Performed using Adobe Lightroom.
The third file shows the 2nd file after some creative editing and cropping of the image components using Adobe Photoshop.
Some parts of the image are removed to make the composition less cluttered like the yellow sconce light and the wall edge on the left.

Noise reduction is applied and after that some creative sharpening is also applied.
And finally some amount of skin tone correction is performed.

It takes a lot of creative digital filtering to get the skin tone closer to a natural tone but given the huge amount of illumination by the magenta toned stage lights, it really is close to impossible to achieve an authentically natural skin tone.

Some amount of detail is lost after the cropping of the photos but for this portrait style shot it works fine. Darelle's earrings and her blouse's shiny details are crisp enough even after the image cropping.





Thursday, December 3, 2015

UK Blues Demo of Roland VG8 Virtual Guitar 1995

A nasty and short demo tune I created for Roland Digital Group Japan to show off patches they consigned me to create for their VG8 Virtual Guitar. This demo was Intended to replicate a two mini song homage to Rolling Stones Keith Richard's 5 string Telecaster tones and the tone off of an old Yardbirds tunes called the Nazz Are Blue with Jeff Beck playing lead guitar back in the day.
I created this back in 1995 using only the VG8 and my sampled drums. These were just a few of the many VG8 factory stock patches I developed for the Roland Digital Group of Japan.


Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Nick Hempton at Shuga Jazz Bistro with special guest Darelle Holden November 28 2015

Sax virtuoso Nick Hempton with Reuel Lubag on piano, Matt Jorgensen on drums, Michael Marcus on bass at Shuga Jazz Bistro. Special guest Darelle Holden on vocals. November 28 2015.