Concert Photography – Part 1a – Lenses

Welcome to the first part of my concert photography articles. As explained previously, I don’t claim to be an expert or more knowledgeable than anyone else particularly, I’m simply passing on some of my experiences. This first article is going to deal with equipment as I see it, what works what doesn’t work, and everything in between. This article is going to assume you have a DSLR, although you can use a film SLR, and people did for years, there are reasons, which I’ll cover in this article and the article on technique, why DSLR is potentially a better tool for this particular job.

Lenses

The first thing to remember about shooting live gigs is that the lighting is different at every gig you go to, it’s never the same amount of light twice, but one thing you can be sure of, and that is that there is never ever enough light. With that in mind if you’re looking to cover this stuff, I recommend as fast a lens as you can afford, ideally f2.8 or faster. OK , so fast lenses aren’t cheap, I get that, but really, other than gaining access to gigs, which I’ll cover in a later article, a fast lens is your biggest obstacle to making a good go of shooting gigs. That doesn’t mean that you have to buy the most expensive lens you can find (although if you can afford to without breaking the bank you’ll be glad you did), Canon and Nikon make a fine range of fast lenses but they come at a premium price, Sigma and other third party manufacturers are likely to make some great lenses for your camera too!! I have friends who use the Sigma 70-200 f2.8 with great success and the retail price on it is almost 50% less than those of the aforementioned brands. The reason they’re so expensive is because the more light a lens has to gather, the larger the elements and the more scope for something causing a defect with the final image. The good news is that most lenses engineered to be this fast also tend to be engineered to professional (or near professional standards) which means that they can take a lickin and keep on tickin!! As you start to shoot more popular gigs you’ll find this really important (15 or 20 photographers in a 6ft wide space across the width of the stage all running around for the shot and trying not to get in each others way) as you’re bound to bang the camera occasionally.

Keeping all of the above in mind, the next question is; Prime or Zoom? This really is a matter of personal choice and technique. On one side prime lenses are lighter, generally cheaper, and almost always faster pound for pound. As an example, if you always get great access to a venue and often find yourself quite close to the stage, then you might be able to work with something like the Canon 135mm f2 (assuming you have a Canon) or similar, a very fast lens, certainly lighter than a fast zoom. The downside is that you trade weight for the flexibility that you get with a zoom lens. My personal preference is to work with fast zooms, always, since there’s very little planning that can be done as to where you get to shoot from at a gig, I find it best to have the zoom and be able to cover most situations. My personal choice (I’m a Canon user) is to use two lenses for my gigs, a Canon EF 70-200mm f2.8 L-IS and a Canon 16-35mm f2.8L, these aren’t necessarily the best tools for the job, they’re just what happens to work for me and my style of photography. One last thing to know is if you get a lense with image stabilization (IS for Canon, VR for Nikon) it has a gyroscopic style mechanism that helps to prevent motion blur caused by not being able to hold the camera still enough. I know people that can hold hand hold a camera using 1/60 shutter speed, but not everyone can. Image Stabilization will help to make lower hand holding speeds without camera shake a possibility, Nikon claim up to 4 stops on some of their literature, but either way it helps (as always with a price premium!). I’ll cover shutter speeds, etc in my technique article.

So, I hear you asking, if there’s not much light, why not make your own light and bring along a good flash? Good question, well most larger venues and even mid-sized theaters have a strictly no flash policy, which is either in place at the request of the artist/bands management or a standard policy of the venue, wither way, get used to not using a flash, I can guarantee as you start out at the smaller venues, 80% of places won’t allow it, and as you start working the bigger venues, you’ll find the flash simply acting as dead weight that you carry around (unless you’re shooting something else while you’re there), but I’ll probably cover this more under etiquette.

That’s all for this article, I originally started to write about bodies in this post, but the post was becoming too long and unwieldy for a blog post. I’ll finish writing the rest of this and post it in thenext day or two. I hope someone finds this article useful, if you do, leave a comment. If you don’t, then let me know why, leave a comment. Something I could of done better? Something I got wrong or is inaccurate? Let me know, leave a comment. Cheers for now.

Seasick Steve Images

I’ve just started to upload some of the Seasick Steve Images from the gig. You can find them in the usual place. Not had much time last few days, have been ultra busy, but will get them all online in due course. Those of you expecting the first part of the concert photography articles can expect to see it this weekend

Tips on Concert Photography – An Introduction

Whilst I’m happy to claim that I’m not the number one concert photographer on the planet, whilst I’ve been shooting live gigs, I’m happy to pass on some tips to those looking to start out doing this. Mostly because I’ve recently found myself getting annoyed at newcomers to the area in much the same way that people got angry at me when I started. There are a few good articles on the web, but most are relatively outdated or largely irrelevant, many focus from the perspective of shooting with traditional film, it’s not that I’m anti-film, but in the arena of concert photography (especially when working to deadlines), digital is king, as I’ll explain in this post. All tips in this post are a combination of my experience, others words of wisdom and common sense, it’s not meant to be definitive, so if I’m wrong on something post a comment and put me straight, so others can read it too!

I’ll be splitting this up in to four parts, because in my opinion, there are four equal parts to concert photography. Part 1 will deal with hardware, and equipment, Part 2 will deal with technique, Part 3 will deal with etiquette (perhaps the most important and least addressed part of the big picture), Part 4 will deal with getting access (which also includes a bit on who gets the finished images). I like to go into detail, so I’ll try and post a part every few days, depending on my work load.

These articles will not cover photoshopping or manipulation, because everyone is different, and all magazines have a different feel to them, so each brief or commission needs to be treated differently.  It doesn’t go into how much to charge once you’ve got some experience, that’s entirely personal. And I don’t cover many legal aspects, but I will touch on a few items that are important to know about (I’m not a lawyer, so any legal stuff I talk about needs to be taken with a pinch of salt, in other words, I’m bringing your attention to something, not giving you a legal opinion, go see a lawyer if you want clarification.  Last but not least, I disclaim any bad stuff that may happen to you as a direct result of taking my advice most people don’t listen to me 99% of the time, I’ve got no reason to expect them to start now!!

Watch this space. Part 1 should be along in a few days.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club Images

I’ve started uploading some of the images from BRMC gig last night, was a great gig, totally sold out and heaving with people. You can find the images in the usual place. Next gig, Seasick Steve at The Spitz in London on Friday.

Bo Diddley Confirmed

Another one for the diary is Bo Diddley on Wednesday 6th June at London’s Jazz Cafe (you can get tickets here), if you’ve been living in a cave for the last 50 years and not heard of him before, some of his career highlights can be found on his Wikipedia Page here. He doesn’t come around that often, so it’ll be a chance for you to see one the great blues legends of our time live in the UK! Don’t miss it! See you there?

The Lazy Jumpers

As promised I went to photograph The Lazy Jumpers live in concert last night (12th April). The venue was mostly full, but I suspect the only reason that it wasn’t bursting at the seams is because this guys are mostly unknown in the UK, but this certainly wasn’t a testament to the bands ability. From start to finish their playing was tight and clearly moved the audience right from the very beginning, with a style that was reminiscent of Paul Lamb, with a distinct rockabilly jive feel to it. Blas Picon (Lead Singer and Harmonica) has a tremendous voice which is totally suited to being behind a microphone, after hearing him, you’d think this would be his strong suit, but when he picked up his harp and green bullet mic, he can wail with the best of them, adding tremendous energy to the performance. Mario Cobo (Guitarist & Vocals) contributed some awesome jazzy licks to the performance and was solid for the entire set. The rhythm section powered the whole thing, with fantastic Double Bass provided by Ivan Kovacevic (I prefer Double Bass over Bass Guitar every time) and clean beats coutesy of David Garcia. The two hour set was awesome with a few old favourites, but the bulk of the evening was filled a huge amount of original material, if these guys aren’t well known in the UK it’s a shame, I think these guys would hold their own at any Blues Festival. I’d recommend going to see them without reservation, they’re from Barcelona and only in the UK for a short time!! Catch them while you can. Cheers for a great night guys!!

As far as the photography aspect goes, lighting was a little low to produce great images, working on ISO3200 @ f2.8 and 1/125th was still producing under exposed images, oh well, better luck next time… the images are good, but could have been better with better lighting… C’est La Vie!

Danny Bryant @ Charters

As scheduled I covered Danny Bryant and The RedEye Band at Charters “Blues on the Boat” in Peterborough on 6th April. A great performance as always and got a chance to chat with Danny about his upcoming festivals and recent gigs, which is always a treat. Great guy, great gig. If you’ve not caught Danny live yet, go check him out. Pics from the gig will be appearing in my gallery as time allows. Covering the Lazy Jumpers tonight, I’m really looking forwards to it.

The Amazing Waterrower

I’m a little short on photography news right now folks, so bear with me a while while I sidetrack to give another piece of equipment I own some long overdue praise and publicity. Anyone who knows me, will know that I’m not the biggest fitness freak out there, but since I enjoy eating, I have to keep moderately active, so some time back I bought myself a rowing machine, but not just any rowing machine, I bought myself “The WaterRower” which, if you’ve never seen before, you should take 10 minutes to look at. It’s cool for a few reasons, firstly like any exercise, it helps to keep away coughs, sneezes and other diseases, keeps us healthy, lowers cholesterol, and all the other stuff people go on about, but we already know that. Rowing is cool because it takes a bunch of impact away from your joints that other exercises don’t, so it’s great without screwing your knees, etc. and exercises 84% of your body in one go. But the WaterRower takes the whole thing to another level for me, ya see the resistance method of this piece of kit is water, so while you’re exercising, you’re able to calm the mind too (unlike Concept C2 rowers which sound like a tread mill or something) with this wonderful “swooshing” noise every time you stroke. Additionally, for the home models they’re made of beautiful hardwood (I picked Cherry wood), look wonderful as a piece of furniture, they store upright if you wish to do so. You get free chlorine tablets to keep the water clean, and like any good piece of gym kit, you can hook your Polar HRM into it, to monitor heart rate on the on board computer if you so wish. What a fantastic piece of equipment, highly recommended to anyone!!