Shooting Shows

Got any concert photographers here? Managed to get myself into a bit of freelance work covering the music scene here in Louisville and I've been kind of winging it, giving it the old fashioned 'learning by doing' treatment.

So far I've covered an outdoor music festival and album release party inside a small, dark venue. Both have challenged me in different ways, thought I'd do a post and see if anyone with bit more experience had any tips, tricks, or guidance to share.

There's really just two areas where I have questions, with the first pertaining to shot selection. How do you get different shots? With all the mic stands and gear on the stage and the physical limits on where you can be and shoot from, I feel like I end up shooting lots of variations of about five or six basic shots. Usually come away feeling like there's something I'm missing, something I'm not doing, but with the constraints I'm working under I can't see what that would be.

The second area is more of a shot in the dark, or at least shooting in low light conditions. The album release show was in a place with something like six lights at the back of the stage and that was about it, even shooting with a f/1.4 85mm prime and f/2.8 24-70mm lenses it was a struggle to get usable images. Can't really use a flash at these things, with the aperture wide open and the exposure set to 1/200 of a second, the only other thing I could think to do was crank the ISO. Ended up taking an ISO of at least 2000 to get anything even remotely close to being properly exposed, which seemed like flirting with grain. Is a bit of graininess just the price of doing business in these conditions, or is there another way of doing it? Can't think of one myself, just hoping there's something I'm missing.

Still trying to figure out how to take interesting group shots. The shots that have gotten published have tended to be closeups of single performers or at most a couple singing together. When I back up to get more in the frame it seems to lose a little something, but short of climbing on the stage with a wide angle lens I'm not sure how to do it differently enough to get better results.

Aside from the fourth photo, none of these made the cut for publication but I'm still fond of them so Hive gets to see them.

Have a bad tendency to just get caught up in the moment and shoot, without being particularly conscious or deliberate about it. I'm working on it.

So who else has dodged the drunks to take photos at a concert? It's been quite the change of pace from shooting protests, but I'm not complaining. That's enough sounding off for one night, until next time, rock on!