I’m really in my element when I am photographing stage performers, especially musicians. It’s not a type of photography I get to do very often, but a couple of weeks back I was invited by my friend John Chamier to come along to the Upper Deck at uShaka Marine World and watch his band perform ahead of the very talented Rowan Stuart. I’ve kind of been stuck in a creative rut of late, so I thought this would be a good chance for me to “get back on the horse”, so to speak.

I’d never been to the Upper Deck before, so on arrival I was quite impressed to see that it really is nicely geared up for live entertainment. You have a great marquee, stage, view of the city and even of the sharks swimming in their big tank below. The stage is fairly large for a supper theatre venue and I was free to roam in the wings and upfront of the performers. Nice.

I took a whole bunch of shots that evening, using my Nikon D700 together with a few lenses. Most of them were taken with the extra-ordinarily good 70-300mm VR. It’s a small, light-weight lens and on the D700 it shines like a bell! I also took some pictures with the 80-200mm 2.8 and 85mm f/1.4, but I found that my best results came from the VR lens. A lot of this has to do with the VR, which is seriously forgiving of my poor technique when it comes to hand-holding in low light.

These shots were all taken at ISO 12,800 and whilst there is some noise visible when you zoom in at 100% in Photoshop, I really like it.