This feature was a good lesson for me in time management. I ended up shooting two scenes, one at my sister’s band practice Tuesday night, where I expertly avoided including her in any shots, and one on Kirkwood Wednesday night. I was hoping to use something I shot on campus, but I must have overshot peak night-life hours, since the best I could do on campus was shoot photos of a Nick’s manager on his phone. I’ll admit, some of the photos looked very cool with the red lighting, but it wasn’t exactly a compelling story.
My run-in with the North marching band happened by coincidence, my mom had offered to take me to Target to grab some groceries after she picked up my sister from practice, and I asked to tag along to practice with the telephoto and wide angle lenses I’d checked out earlier that day. It has reached the point where the only people in the band that I know are my sister and some of the long-time staff members. As a member of the North class of 2019, even the freshman who I barely knew my senior year have now graduated. It makes attending competitions a little weird, but it’s nothing but good for this nighttime feature.
My story shows the typical practice schedule for the band, condensed into 5 photos of 330 taken in about 45 minutes. They had been practicing in the parking lot for about two hours before this, and moved to the football field not long after my mom and I got set up. My first photo of them coming into the stadium was shot with the telephoto lens, a EF 70-200mm F2.8. I switched between that and a 35mm wide-angle throughout the evening. I ended up cropping it to get rid of some of the night sky and put more emphasis on the group flooding in. I think this is a refined version of my photo from their competition in Greenwood, IN., where I got a picture of them walking towards me. Here I was higher up in the stands and was able to set them against the field better.
The next three photos I consider the rising action, climax and falling action of the story. In the layered photo of the trumpet players, soloists Denson Pollard Jr. and Cedric Brown were told to perform their solo several times, because the pit percussion in front of them were slowing down. Behind them, a color guard member is practicing her spins. During lulls like this, a lot of the wind members will take the opportunity to chat with those around them, while the color guard work on tricky areas in their choreography.
My third photo of Aaliyah is a good example of this, she was practicing while the directors focused on working with the percussion. When photographing the band, I’m constantly drawn to the color guard as they’re the most visual group. I love the lighting here as well, and the line that her flag makes almost collects with her leg. It’s an almost perfect shot, to me.
The fourth photo is my detail shot, this is a little atypical from what I would normally consider a detail, but I also noticed the break in the pattern in what was otherwise a really powerful pose, and then I couldn’t ignore it. It’s almost comedic, I think. I decided to keep the lines of band members around him to maintain that pattern and emphasized the break with a closer crop. I had a hard time getting close to the band partially because I didn’t want to distract them. I know high schoolers get distracted easily and I have been on thin ice with band director Thomas Wilson since my 8th grade year when I joined the marching band. I chose to play it safe, relying on the zoom of my telephoto when I wanted to get closer.
The final photo is my wide shot and the resolution of my story. As explained in the caption, after practice is over the band breaks up into their sections. This is when section leaders collect everyone’s drill cards and everyone gets a chance to provide their thoughts on how the practice went and critique each other. I was almost ready to start packing up when I decided to see if I could shoot through the fence for fun. I ended up really liking the shot because of the lines.
I really enjoyed this project because I felt comfortable enough in the setting to move around more and experiment more than I typically do on campus or at band competitions. While I don’t know any of the band members, that field was where I spent a lot of my time in high school and due to my familiarity with the types of drill the North band gets, I typically know when I can get close and when I should back off.
In the future, I want to move away from my comfort zone. While I have had fun photographing the band, and I still plan to do so when I can just for practice, this will be the last time I use them as subjects for a major assignment. Coming off of midterms week I know it’s past time for me to step out of my comfort zone, and I’m committing myself to that here in writing. There will always be a soft spot in my heart for the North band, but in order to grow as a photographer I need to experience new things and deal with unfamiliar situations.