Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

I’ve been wanting to photograph the Dirty Disco Dance Party at Eastside Tavern on Friday nights for a while now, and last night I finally took my camera with me. I was playing around a lot with my new pocket wizards and off-camera flash and finally decided to position the strobe on a shelf above the entrance door, right next to one of the speakers. It took me a while to figure out the proper lighting, especially since I had to light both the DJ area and the dance floor with one strobe (bouncing off a black ceiling), but eventually I managed to get decent results by adjusting shutter speed and f-stop depending on where I was and let the strobe run on the same setting all throughout.

The irony was that my shoot was cut short once I had figured out my lighting and before the party even really started. The bass vibrations of the speaker next to strobe made it slowly bounce toward the edge of the shelf – until it dropped 8 feet deep on concrete. Amazingly enough, it was still looking alright and was even firing fine; however, the reflector zoom is in pretty bad shape, so I’ll have to send it in for repair nevertheless. So behold, here are some of the most expensive party pictures I ever took. You better enjoy!