The Terrace Ringleader: Cedric Gervais

I've been shooting nightlife photos for over 4 years now. I've been in big clubs, little clubs, well designed clubs and holes in the wall. I feel like I've seen it all when it comes to the nocturnal experience. But never before (luckily) have I ever experienced serious technical difficulties while shooting...until this past weekend.

On Saturday, May 2nd, Club Glow and FUR Nightclub hosted Space resident Cedric Gervais from Miami. Gervais is one of these DJs that's easy to hate on. He's French, looks incredibly cool in sunglasses, is resident DJ at one of the top clubs in the world, has hit dance records, has worked with several major rock stars, and is followed by a clique of unnaturally good looking female fans known as "The Gervettes."

There is, however, more to the Marseilles native than meets the eye or the ear. Recent years have seen the Miami DJ/Producer catapult into the ranks of electronic music stardom. His snowballing success and rock star persona is as intriguing as it is evident. In a time when its normal to speculate about the artistic validity of artists that have "the look," Cedric boldly accepts that he's a product and demonstrates that he's got the substance to back up the style. Just ask Deep Dish or Lenny Kravitz what they think of him and his music.

So you can understand how frustrated I was when the first few shots I took of opening DJ Sultan failed to produce a decent image. Were my settings off? Did I get bumped while taking the shot? What was going on here??? That's when I realized my camera wasn't focusing. I looked at the front and noticed my light meter wasn't firing upon focus. When I removed my flash, it worked. All I could think was, am I going crazy here??? Did I mistakenly turn it off somewhere?

Long story short, the external flash batteries had died. The external flash has a meter that typically fires for auto-focus. Because the batteries were dying a slow and painful death, I was able to manually focus a few shots while still using the flash. But then after about 20 minutes into Gervais set, the entire flash was dead in the water. So I went back to my roots and took what I could using the stock flash on the camera.

Sometimes it's good to just turn your flash off if you're trying to capture lighting effects without much attention on your subject. So I think overall I was able to capture some pretty decent shots considering. But man is it frustrating when you're in a DJ booth with a world-class DJ, trying to do your job and suddenly your equipment fails. Ugh!

The good news is, I now have back-ups. I also have a decent set of pictures from the night and a lesson learned. And if you're wondering, Gervais put on a great show. His set was ripe with hard-hitting electro and progressive house that I could feel in my bones hours after I left the show. Just another night on the DC nightlife beat.

Labels: Entertainment, House, Music, Nightlife, Trance

posted by DVS @ 1:55 PM