So with some delay I am posting about my last photo shoot. Tallinn Music Week was music industry event with local artists showcase. I was part of the Jazzkaar web team and shooting at NO99 & Jazzkaar showcase. It was a busy 2 evenings with 18 different bands taking turns to show their stuff every 30 minutes in 2 separate halls in NO99 Theater. It was funny how people had to run up and down of stairs every 30 min. So it was sport and culture experience in one As for lineup I did enjoy variety. First day was jazzy and second  was folky. Bunch of bands that I have not seen and lots of known artists as part of different groups. As Estonia is a small country it is not unusual that musicians play in different bands. So this event was intensive for them as they also had to run up and down of stairs. My favorites have always been Sofia Rubina this time with Sofia Rubina NuJazz. It is happy feel good music,  wants to make you to dance and Sofia´s energy and positive aura is really refreshing. Since Estonians are most of time up tight it is really great contrast to our gray existence. She is also participating in my other favorite project called Nortic Sounds, whose main members are Villu Veski & Tiit Kalluste. This is a group that plays music with influences from places where they have been to. So you hear meditative nortic tunes and hot Argentinean tangos. For me ideal mix, this is music for soul.  Other surprising numbers were Drum Prana, Free Tallinnn Trio and Vsjata Vatra. And naturally I always love blues, truly universal type of music that all people can relate to. This time we heard authentic sounding Delta Blues by Bullfrog Brown. Another reason why I was there was photography. This was also my first official shoot with pass in Estonia. Due to lots of artists you needed to switch over fast and shoot a lot. So you could not concentrate on one number and trying to capture essence of the sound and artist. Light also changed almost with every artist. So I ended up shooting manually and using almost every capture spot metering on skin and face. I found very handy setting up function button with spot metering option. Normally I have metering on matrix but using function button I can select spot very fast when needed. All in all I am very happy with performance of my D90. For sure it can do all same stuff that D300 can, weather proof body is not relevant indoors. Also I shot few video clips, more about those in next post. Photos you can judge yourself in gallery.

Went to  Relax Cafe    on 20.03.2009. It is a new place in town for all  jazz lovers. Nice spacious place that offers food and comfortable seating. Ideal place for small parties with friends enjoying food, few drinks and great music Specifically I went to listen cosmopolitan band that calls themselves ART of Trio that is made up from artists: Brian Melvin - Drums  Toivo Unt - Double Bass Ryo Kawasaki - Guitar Toivo is an old school Estonian base player. Brian is originally from USA, Ryo is originally from Japan(and NY), both now living in Estonia. As always with these artists I had a great time and totally relaxing music experience in relaxing atmosphere in Relax Cafe :) I heard a few John Coltrane pieces and other good old fashioned jazz. Excitement also was when Ryo broke one of strings in guitar during play. He said that had not happened more than 40 years :) See video bellow as it happened. As for photography it was terrible. It was pitch dark as Brian Melvin asked sound guy to turn down all lights  so there would be more club like atmosphere. Well I guess he was right, got to have cozy atmosphere in club. In any case I cranked up ISO in camera and got some ok images even at ISO 1600 and 3200. The spot Ryo was standing had really horrible changing light, he was blue, green , red and so on. So I ended up turning some of his pictures into monochrome. Also video bellow has horrible rolling shutter as in low light D90 can do that. This is generally problem when trying to make video with DSLR in low light and hopefully it will be improved in future models. In fact I hope it can be improved with firmware update! Photos you find here and videos here