Urban Marinade

Wow, lots and lots to update you on. First of all, forgive us for going MIA the past few weeks. We’ve been in LA covering the Emmy’s, movie premieres and a massive convention featuring Tony Bennett, Lionel Richie, Tim Gunn, Spike Lee and many more. But we’re back and so it’s time to update you on our most recent night at Teka.

The photos above come from Miami’s Armand Pena visiting Lima Lounge for the Friday night house music party known as Teka. Armand came into the venue, quietly plugged in his usb’s and proceeded to blow the roof off the joint. I personally didn’t leave until after 3 a.m. because the music was just that damn good. Pena seemed to have a keen sense of his crowd and the ebbs and flows of the dance floor. He knew when to take things deep and also spring some more popular progressive tracks to get people fired up. Afrojack, Fedde le Grand, Zenbi… nothing was off the table for Pena at Lima.

As for my approach to photography, well it’s clear I was happy with this set of images. I shot the whole night on raw, which was a first for me with the D300s. After opening my first image and seeing a ton of noise, I started to question the idea of it. But then I got the hang of the post-production editing and realized raw is pretty amazing in how it allows you to manipulate the image completely. I’m still not sold on the idea of it because I like letting my camera do some of the work. I mean, isn’t that what photography is all about? Don’t get me wrong, I see the advantage of being able to adjust the exposure in post, but shouldn’t proper exposure be your priority when taking the shot? Plus, who the heck has the time to edit through 500 images in raw when photography isn’t your full-time job? If this was all I did for a living, I’d say no problem. But the extra time and effort left me editing photos on a plane to and from LA in hopes of completing the gallery in a reasonable time-frame. Like I said, I love the results. I think the images are vibrant and the colors are great. I think I removed the noise enough to keep the images tack sharp. But I’m not sure I’ll photograph Saeed this Friday on the raw setting. I might let me camera do a little bit of the work this week. =)