Mary J Blige at BET

I shoot onset at BET’s 106 & Park pretty often. It’s a good gig because in the course of a month you might get starts like Kanye West, 50 Cent, Ciara, Jay-Z…you never know. But since the artists are there to tape a TV program, and not for a photo session, it can be hard to get the shot you need. As I mentioned in the “Gone in 16 Seconds” post below, you’re often working with a minimal amount of time.

Here’s Mary J Blige from one of those 5 second sessions. It was shot at 1600 using my new Nikon D3. It’s a cluttered shot that is far from my best work. However, it is a shot I simply could not have gotten with my D2x. Using the D2x I would have been using a flash, and in the amount of time it would have taken me to figure out how to balance the ambient light with the strobe light, I would have missed the shot. With the D3 it was possible to shoot flashless (due to its better performance in low light), and I was able to get a decent shot.