Scott Diussa Photography

“How to...” Concert Photography

Monday, February 23, 2009

This is the first one of these that I have done on this blog and I am entitling it... “How to...”. I was asked by a good friend to email someone from a camera club how to do concert photography. Well, since I’m going to write it anyway I might as well make a blog entry out of it. Sound good??? So, maybe I’ll do some more “How to...” type of entries in the future but for now I’m going to give you some of my basic thoughts on taking pictures at concerts.

Now, if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time you know that I am a guitarist as well. So, when I shoot concerts I think of it as the next best thing to actually being on stage and playing. If I can’t live one dream I might as well live the other, right? ;-)

I remember the first concert I photographed and that was, I believe, Cheap Trick at a fair grounds in Florida in 1991. When I say I shot this concert what I mean is that I borrowed a Nikon 6006 camera and a 75-300mm lens and smuggled it into the show. I had a couple of rolls of the new Fuji 800 speed film at the time which was light years ahead of anything that was available just a short time before. (And, I may have actually shoved the lens in my pants as well... I guess it was about the size of the foil wrapped cucumber from the movie “This is Spinal Tap”!) I actually got some good shots that evening but only when the guys in the band weren’t moving too fast. It was probably about 1/60 at f5.6 or so at 300mm. (If you know photography... do the math. Not a great shutter speed for this...).

Then years later when I was in school for photography I did an entire semesters portfolio on concerts shot at a club in Orlando called Jani Lane’s Sunset Strip. It’s a long story on how this relationship with this club came about but it was an awesome time! I had a lot of great opportunities to really learn what I was doing... still all with a film camera. T-MAX 3200 turned out to be one of my favorites!

I haven’t shot too many shows with Nikon but the “Nikon Live” section of the www.nikonusa.com site gave me an opportunity to shoot some of the big shows... the big arena shows which are completely different from club shows.

So, if you want to do live performance photography you have to figure out your limitations to each type of show you shoot. Is it a club type of venue? Or, is it a full arena venue? How many songs do you get? Can you use a flash? Do you know the band and the songs? There are a lot of things to think about with concert and live performance photography. I know that there are a lot of people who do this better than I do... I’m just going to give you some of my basic techniques to get you started. I’ll let you take it from there an make your own style out of it.

Here are some of my basic techniques... then I’ll show you some images...

1.Get your exposure down... fast. If you only have three songs you’d better have it nailed by the second verse of the first song! If it’s a club show and you get to shoot the whole time then you have more time to work with.
2.If you can, have two cameras loaded with fresh memory cards ready to go. Have one camera body with a short zoom such as a 24-70mm and the second camera body with a long zoom like a 70-200mm or so.
3.If you only have a single body and lens decide which one is more important based on where you are going to be. You don’t want to have to change them out too much. Maybe the short one for the first couple of songs and a long lens for the last song.
4.Manual exposure - Spot Metering... Spot meter off of the face when the spot light is on the subject. Set your camera manually to that reading and just start shooting. If you don’t have enough shutter speed then raise your ISO setting... If you are at the top limit of your ISO setting then under-expose a little to get a faster shutter speed and hope for the best.
5.ISO settings... This depends on the camera you have. Arena shows are usually great at ISO 1600-2000. If you have a lens that can shoot at f2.8 that is... If you are far away with a lens that is at f5.6 then you either need to lower your shutter speed, resulting in a possibly blurry image... under-expose by a stop or two and hope to pull it out in post processing... or, raise your ISO setting to something higher than what is recommended like Hi +1 or Hi +2. If you don’t have these settings you just may have not enough light to pull it off... that’s why 2.8 lenses are so expensive! :-)
6.Shoot a lot! RAW or JPEG? Well, if you are shooting RAW files then you had better have some really huge cards available. It’s a personal preference. Depending on the concert I may choose either. For the outdoor shows that have lighting changes all the time RAW may work better... for more controlled indoor shows that have more consistent lighting JPEGs may work better. Also, the speed of your camera shooting RAW files may dictate which one you choose.

Enough talking... let’s look at some examples... both old and new.

Def Leppard - First Mid West Bank Amphitheater - Chicago, Il. June 30, 2007

Spot meter off of the face when the full spot is on the subject. Then set your exposure manually and start cranking out images.

(Don Dokken)

Continuous High-Speed shooting is totally necessary for someone like Sebastian Bach. This guy can move like no other... real fast. It’s just about impossible to anticipate the perfect moment with a subject like him!

Minimum 1/500 shutter speed...

Concentrate on using the whole frame. Here are a couple of Tommy Shaw from Styx to use as an example. In the left image there is a bit more breathing room but if you look at the composition... he is still looking into the frame and the guitar neck isn’t chopped off. The right image is a tighter version but notice how his hand isn’t cut off in the top right of the image... very important.

Background elements are very important as well. If you know the band, Foreigner, you would know that their Foreigner 4 album (I’m dating myself!) was one of their most popular. I’m glad I got the “4” in the frame with Jeff Pilson in the left image. On the right image you’ll see the “Styx” in the background which is very important as to the band member in this particular image. Always be aware of your backgrounds.

Follow your subject and don’t forget to turn around! These two images were taken not far apart from each other. Although the part of the stage that went out into the audience kept me from moving to the other side it created a different view other than straight on as seen on the right. (Joe Elliott, Def Leppard)

Angles, interaction, details and light... sometimes everything just comes together in a single show. This is a band called Elevation and as you may have guessed... they are a U2 tribute band... and a really good one as well! These were taken on St. Patrick’s Day, 2008, at the Nine Fine Irishmen Pub in the New York, New York casino in Las Vegas. I had a D300 and 16-85mm lens with me and had a great time. Since it wasn’t actually U2 themselves I had a bit more freedom up near the stage. They were a great band and did a great job at presenting a history of U2 with songs I have never heard before. So, besides having a great time with my wife and friends I got some really fun images as well.

As you can see I had plenty of time to explore my subject here. When you have time like this take advantage of it...

Guitars are great! And, details of guitars are great, too! I am a bit biased but don’t forget to photograph everything including the details.

CC Deville - Poison (Above)

Dave Meniketti - Y&T (Right)

Flash or not to Flash... most of the time you can not use a flash at all. With today’s cameras like the D3, D300 and D90 cameras not using a flash is no big deal. (Gotta love technology). But, like I did with these two shots back in 1995 (Dana Strum and Mark Slaughter from Slaughter on the left... and Jack Blades from Night Ranger on the right.) I needed to us a flash. These were actually with 100 ISO Fuji print film, a Nikon N90s, 28-70mm D lens and an SB-25 flash. I had permission to use flash so I mixed the available light with the flash so it didn’t render the background black but it slowed the shutter speed down as a result. Notice the motion blur in the left image... makes a great effect.

Eye contact is great, too. Don’t be obnoxious as a photographer and you will get a lot more cooperation out of the band. After they realize you are not going to drive them crazy you’ll start a rapport with them that may get you some good eye-contact shots... (Band: Strutter... a Kiss tribute band... 1995)

Follow great subjects... CC Deville from Poison is very animated and the more animated the performer, the better shots you get. Remember, with that sort of animation come a lot of throw away images, too. So, shoot a lot! You’ll be happy that you did...

So, finally for something different, as you may have seen in a recent post I shot some pictures of the band Blues Traveler and had a whole show to experiment. This is very rare especially when you are in a large arena but if you get an opportunity such as this what do you do after you think you have shot it all? Use some of your not so well known camera functions. With new Nikon DSLR camera you can shoot multiple exposures right in the camera. Good luck doing this with a film camera! I had never really had the time to experiment like this and it was a great learning experience. I had a lot of “misses” but I had a few keepers as well. So, don’t forget to experiment if you have the opportunity...

I hope this has helped with your understanding of concert photography. This is one of my favorite types of photography and I will say that it is a challenging type of photography as well. I certainly am not the be-all expert on this subject. There are many great photographers out there that have been doing this for a long time. Check out Neil Zlozower’s images at www.zloz.com for some really great stuff you will definitely recognize. Also, be sure to check out Baron Wolman’s work as well...

If you found this “How to...” post interesting and useful let me know. If you didn’t hopefully you’ll just humor me! ;-) I’d like to do more of these but as you can see they are a bit more involved. I had fun putting this together in such a short time and if you know someone who could benefit from it please pass it along.

Thanks for stopping by... it’s off to Vegas again this weekend! Gee... can’t wait! I think I’m going to take the “Dam Tour” at the Hoover Dam. We’ll see how it goes!

Main Blog Page

Also, don’t forget to shoot from “entire to detail” and have some fun along the way... (Big Electric Cat, Photoshop World, House of Blues, Las Vegas, September 2008)