Concert Photography Part 2a - Creative Interpretation

Welcome back, apologies for the long delay, sometimes life just gets in the way, and things get pushed back a bit. So without further ado, here’s part 2a!!. After spending some time writing this part of the article I realised that it was going to be another tome. So I’ve split it into two parts. The first part is know your audience, who are you selling to, what style are you shooting? The second part is, what methods and technical settings am I using to get my shots.

I believe it was Ansel Adams that was attributed to have said “There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.” and you should regard this article in a very similar way, the techniques that I talk about here are not by any means the definitive way, or perhaps even a good way to achieve concert shots, they’re simply the way I do it.

Some folk in the business of concert photography my look upon my work as cliche, or passe, but the way I shoot is very much in accordance with my target market (the publications that commission the work I do). You should always bear this in mind when shooting. Typically publications like NME don’t want the normal “up-the-nose-shots” of bands and prefer something more off the wall, more cutting edge, which is fine if you can pull The Raconteurs to one side after a gig and take an hour of their time composing some bang up shots, but for the other 99.99% of photographers that don’t have that kind of access, it might not be a possibility. But always remember, as a general rule of thumb, when you’re starting out you should shoot the type of music that you love. If you hate classical and go to a classical music gig, your photo’s are likely to reflect that (unless you’ve been hooting stuff you don’t like for a long time and know how to get the shot the editor wants). As long as you’re shooting gigs of bands that you’d normally pay money to go and see, it’ll never get old, or dull, or boring. What’s more, you’re pictures will reflect your love and enthusiasm, it’s inevitable.

So bearing this in mind, quite often (the larger the gig the more this is likely to hold true, festivals often being an exception) you’ll be out front with the other photographers, for two or maybe three numbers, so first thing is to get the bread and butter shots, if you go out with artistic intentions and come away with nothing of use to the magazine you’re submitting to, then you have to ask why were you there?. Know the picture editor of the publication (this goes for anyone wanting to get work from a magazine, as well as those already doing so) know what they like, know the magazine, know the subject matter. Ask yourself; What style of publication is it? What’s the overall feel of the magazine? What type of stuff do they regularly publish? Do I cover bands that are appropriate fodder for them? To take an extreme example; you want NME to take a look at your portfolio, you need shots of new or cutting edge bands, and contemporary music shots, with an edgy feel to them. Mojo on the other hand, might love some “up-the-nose” shots of Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, if it’s currently topical and a great image. But I digress, get the main shot, so you have something to go back with; for me perhaps this means a couple of close-ups of the individual bands members (that’s all the band members), a couple of wide shots of the group on stage, a couple of real close crops of the main artist. Ok, you’re happy that you got those, now you can start getting a little creative, some of the crowd perhaps, some with some lens flare?, some silhouettes? some blurred? BZZZZZZZZ times up, security is escorting you out of the auditorium. Two numbers have played, and assuming it’s not Emerson, Lake and Palmer, the songs are going to be probably 3 or 4 minutes each, there should be no surprises, the stage management/security will tell you in advance how many songs you’ll be allowed to shoot for. If you’re good with security, they’ll be good with you. Don’t start shooting, before or after you’re allowed, or they’ll get angry, listen closely to their instructions, and you’ll do just fine, don’t listen and ignore them and be prepared for a very short career, because you’re likely to bump in to the same security guys more than once!

So you’re back in the studio, looking at the images, post processing, if you’re working to a commission, don’t hang around prep the images for transfer (ftp, email, CD, DVD) and get them off at the earliest possible opportunity, editors have a job to do, they have to produce a magazine, if they don’t ever have to chase you for images, and they’re always sent to them in a timely fashion, then they’ll be much happier than if they have to chase for the images or worse have to redo a layout because your images simply weren’t there in a timely fashion.

I hope you enjoyed this article and found it useful or insightful. Next time, I’ll be talking a little about f-stops, shutter speeds and other stuff.

Concert Photography Part 1b - Bodies

The Body

So, what about the camera body?? Use the one you have until you can buy the one you want. Ideally the body you use will be relatively modern (if it’s a DSLR) because the newer the technology, and the higher the quality body, generally the less noise your sensor will give. Your camera should be able to manage working at 1600 ISO or higher (3200 ISO ideally), which is why I said the technology should be as new as possible, older technology sensors have significantly more noise than those of newer bodies. The important thing to remember is it’s not always about price and cost, after long deliberation, I eventually opted for the EOS5D over the more expensive professional models simply because the 5D generated less digital noise than any of the other models available at the time, an you’ll probably find yourself wanting to lift the exposure on a shot quite frequently in post processing, which is where digital noise really shows. The noise generated by my EOS 20D at ISO 3200, is far worse than when the same settings are used on my EOS 5D, and less noise makes for a cleaner image. Ideally, the body should have spot metering, and at the very least partial metering (sometimes I prefer partial over spot, I’ll discuss more in the piece on technique). The frames per second isn’t an issue for me, because I often know what shot I’m looking for based on the mood of the gig at that point in time and fire off 2 or 3 shots to get the shot. Others I’ve worked with, use high frames per second, and blow through a memory card every 5 minutes. It’s down to personal style. In camera metering systems that you’ll be working with are all quite different from brand to brand and even in some cases from camera to camera, the more you live with it, the better you’ll come to know it, I’d like to say you can use your light meter, but as you know the reality is that the pre-gig lighting is normally quite low and the lights are enormously changeable and most of the time you’ll be working too intensly to have the luxury of time to even think about pulling out a light meter, best to leave it at home… less to carry .

What about the quantity of bodies?? Well I work with two sometimes, and other times that’s just overkill. As an example, when working Wembley or another large venue, you almost certainly want two bodies, you want the close-ups and you want the wides, and because you may only have 2 songs in which you can get your shots, time is of the essence. This means no time to change lenses, two bodies, one with a 16-35mm or 24-70mm another body with 70-200mm or similar, and swap around as you need. For smaller more intimate venues, or places where perhaps the stage isn’t quite so elevated, or you have plenty of time to change lenses, one body would suffice. Again more discussion of this in my piece on technique. The bodies I use are a Canon EOS20D and an EOS 5D. That’s where I’ll leave it for the moment, the next article up will be part 2 - Technique. Hopefully this has been useful to people, I’ll probably add to this article based on peoples feedback and if I remember anything I forgot to add in when I wrote it originally.