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Try correcting the color cast, but it'll be hard to do with that much. I'd mess with it in black and white really.
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Oct 16, 2009 06:34
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Thankfully there was a lots of blue/green/white lights as well. And Flogging Molly had REALLY good lighting. (Like I wa shooting at 250-320 and still some stuff was slightly getting blown out slightly, but really I probably should have just dropped my ISO to 800 instead of keepin it at 1600)
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Oct 16, 2009 06:58
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Four Banger posted:ALSO gently caress shooting from the crowd. Captain drunks-a-lot and his gay tattoos jumping on your back and trying to shove you out of the way is a pain in the rear end.
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Oct 16, 2009 08:03
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edit: nevermind
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Oct 16, 2009 08:13
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Four Banger posted:(And gently caress red lights) Yeah, lighting can be get out of hand fast. Add some fog to that, and I'm all ready to give up sometimes. But you should feel lucky to be able to bring in your camera at all despite having to fight drunks, which you'd have to fight anyway camera or not. And don't forget to enjoy the show yourself.
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Oct 16, 2009 14:28
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slowly getting into concert photography..and i have to say..i love it. i doubt it pays much..which im beginning to learn. here are a few from the last show. the band didn't ask for them..but i've emailed over and they seem to love them. fire away. I'm not 100% happy about the b&w... http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2504/4016712011_978b051442_o.jpg I love this guys face.. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2504/4016711115_9717d7bbf1_o.jpg
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Oct 16, 2009 19:08
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neospec posted:slowly getting into concert photography..and i have to say..i love it. i doubt it pays much..which im beginning to learn. here are a few from the last show. the band didn't ask for them..but i've emailed over and they seem to love them. fire away. the crop and awkward angle on the first makes for a weird image. I kind of expect to see more.
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Oct 16, 2009 19:11
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AIIAZNSK8ER posted:the crop and awkward angle on the first makes for a weird image. I kind of expect to see more. actually, not a crop at all. 50mm f/1.4
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Oct 16, 2009 19:16
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neospec posted:actually, not a crop at all. 50mm f/1.4 i should rephrase, awkward composition. the space at the top showing the venue doesnt really add to the mood of the performance to me, I would rather see more of the performers body and/or instruments and their interaction with it.
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Oct 16, 2009 19:19
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So I finally got through all the photos (They can be seen here http://www.theseriousbusiness.ca ) This one is probably my favorite of the bunch. 
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Oct 18, 2009 05:44
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Backstage Concert series     
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Oct 18, 2009 06:56
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Alright, I'm looking to get my foot in the door for band photography; how would I go about doing so? Contacting venues or PR firms (I'm looking at starting local though, really)?
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Oct 18, 2009 14:09
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I, Butthole posted:Alright, I'm looking to get my foot in the door for band photography; how would I go about doing so? Contacting venues or PR firms (I'm looking at starting local though, really)? This post was linked before, but it has a good description of everything from execution to getting passes, etc. -- http://www.boudist.com/archive/2007/02/07/concert-photography-masterclass.php
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Oct 18, 2009 17:53
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I, Butthole posted:Alright, I'm looking to get my foot in the door for band photography; how would I go about doing so? Contacting venues or PR firms (I'm looking at starting local though, really)? Sometimes venues can set you up, but unless they know you, I'd avoid going that route. PR reps are who I go through 90% of the time unless I know the band, the tour manager or I was shooting for the house. What you'll want to do is probably start by finding some local music blogs and sites and offering to shoot for them. Unless you have a media outlet, the PR rep has zero reason to approve you for a pass. Once you have a way to show your photos it will be a lot easier to get approved. Then once you get some content, make your own blog, site, whatever. As you start to get things rolling, you'll start to amass a list of contacts at labels, publicity firms, mangers, etc and this will help you out a TON when it comes to knowing who to get ahold of. Save emails, make an excel file, etc. It also doesn't hurt to ask for a tour manager contact after you've been approved as every now and again, somewhere between the publicist and the final list at the venue you get left off and if you don't have a contact, you might be screwed. It's saved me on more than one occasion. You'll start to learn the easy PR people to work with too. Some of them I've never met, but I feel like they're my friends and some of them are some of the most distant bitchy people you'll ever talk to. Most are pretty good overall though, so don't ever be afraid to request a pass.
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Oct 19, 2009 03:13
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a few more i was able to shoot recently: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2582/4025693747_8bdbe41e53.jpg http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3519/4026440402_a91935c250.jpg http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2720/4025694901_8f39a298bc.jpg
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Oct 21, 2009 21:24
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neospec posted:a few more i was able to shoot recently: I don't normally dig the more processed-looking stuff but with that awesome venue it just adds to the surreal feel. That last one is really eye-catching. KMFDM is in town tonight. SUPER pumped to see these guys, and the relatively small-ish venue they're playing is perfect for photos. dreggory fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Oct 21, 2009 |
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Oct 21, 2009 22:44
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Holy crap. I just figured out by fluke that if you've got blocky, oversaturated highlights from stage lights, ctrl-alt-U in Photoshop Elements does a heck of a job of ironing it out and recovering detail automatically. It saves me a ton of time versus doing it manually.
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Oct 25, 2009 20:35
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KMFDM was...an interesting challenge. Moments of great opportunity wedged in between 10 minute segments of red lights and standing behind huge equipment podiums. Still got a few I liked, though. Definitely taught me a lot about how to leverage my light sources. Though sometimes those red lights aren't all bad   Rest of the set is here if you want to check it out: http://www.flickr.com/photos/m_bradshaw/sets/72157622660715866/
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Oct 27, 2009 04:04
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Hey thanks for the forum for concert photography. As far as the OP goes, I don't do it for profit (though I'm in demand, and do occasionally get paid) so I don't have any pearls of wisdom there. But for the newbies, I just can't over-emphasize the value of following a local band that you admire for a few months. Or a venue. It's important to be trusted. It'll also help you gain confidence. Try and get some of the audience in your shots for ambience. Bands LOVE shots in which you get every member of the band (very difficult but doable). Oh, and look at LOTS of photo books regardless of subject. I began doing punk photography because of a book of Truffaut film stills. Who knew? To each his own but I avoid large concert venues where a press pass is necessary. I like the thrill of the hunt and can appreciate a challenge. So I shoot *for* my limitations and make sure to at least have fun if I know I'm not going to get anything from a concert. Also, after you've shot for a year or so ask yourself: Do I need better gear or do I need a better eye? Am I developing a personal style? What themes emerge from my work that I might better suss out? Most importantly: Am I having fun? My style/gear: Nikons with manual focus lenses mostly 24mm and sometimes 50mm. Tri-X 400 pushed twice (and some slide color). Lots of on-camera flash though I'll occasionally throw a second flash with a slave on stage. Compose in camera, no or minimal cropping. I *rarely* do photos from a below the waist POV (the 'rock' pose) or close ups. Lucky me, bands seek me out for my style, so I don't have to deal with what they want or don't want (though I'm certainly receptive). Sorry so long! Here have some pics:        BTW, Sterf's photo of Bobby Liebling is insane. Loved it!
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Oct 27, 2009 07:34
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spritely, those shots are awesome. They really put me there in the middle of the energy of the show. I got to see my favorite band in the whole wide world, The Gay Blades.The biggest problem was that I was up front right against the stage, looking up, the light cans were pointing straight at me and caused flares almost 90% of the time. The only choice I had was to do the halo-block-out-the-light thing. I was way too excited to take pictures, so I really only got this one. On the plus side, I hung out with them after the show and passed out some of my moo cards. This is my current man crush, Clark Westfield.  This was the opener, Millions of Brazillions  Electric Six was headlining, but I was too busy crushing on TGB at the merch table.   Crits are welcome, how do you guys deal with flares when you can't back up any more? Are there hoods for the 50 1.8? would that help?
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Oct 28, 2009 02:38
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I generally think flare looks pretty good in concert photos, its one of the unique things you get out of the lighting...
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Oct 28, 2009 05:01
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Lens flare can look good, but in some lenses it can really murder contrast (my Tamron 17-50 does this).
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Oct 28, 2009 10:27
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AIIAZNSK8ER posted:spritely, those shots are awesome. They really put me there in the middle of the energy of the show. Fanx, aiiaz! Those particular live shots you posted were just fine, halo effect is def. a plus! AIIAZNSK8ER posted:On the plus side, I hung out with them after the show and passed out some of my moo cards. Don't forget to take those candid band moments! Esp. when you aren't real confident with the live shots. Bands aren't usually averse to being corralled into the bathroom for a quick shot. ScumbagPro tip: Bathrooms often have good lighting! Here are a couple of my fave boys room shots: Gay Marriage in "my studio" aka the boys room at Rudyard's British Pub...  Hypochristians in the shower stall of the grossest venue bathrooms on earth. Pretty apropos...  Oh. And what's a moo card?
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Oct 28, 2009 18:42
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http://us.moo.com/en/ tiny promo/business cards with my photos and information on them. They are relatively cheap and effective as handouts, really great quality too. Its automatically integrated into my flickr, so its simple to get a set.
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Oct 28, 2009 19:07
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spritely posted:Hypochristians in the shower stall of the grossest venue bathrooms on earth. Pretty apropos... That's not so bad. Here's the bathroom at The Cobalt before it closed:  Be thankful the camera doesn't capture smell as well. Click on the photo and select "Original" if you have some time to kill and want to read the graffiti.
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Oct 29, 2009 01:48
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Here's my cobalt bathroom series:   Really, it had better, and better smelling facilities than Richard's on Richards. Just stay out of the stall in the men's room and beware of water coming from the ceiling after severe rainstorms (but this went for the whole bar). I kept a piece of chipped tile as a memento
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Oct 29, 2009 02:13
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spritely posted:I digress, if you want me to buy you a beer or just see your stuff on our pages (and thus be more likely to get paid) try this: *As said, if you can get all the band members clearly in a shot, we will almost ALWAYS use it. Pretend it's like a video game (Any other Photogs play pokemon snap as a kid? (or maybe Dead Rising) the more members of the band you get cleanly in a shot, the more it's worth to us. *On a lot of stages, especially locally, the sound is shoddy, for one musician to cross the stage to interact with another is a pretty big deal as he often loses "sight" and plays "blind". In addition, stage set-ups are usually consistent and the guy on stage right will only be standing next to the guy on stage left for a few seconds. These are good photo opps as you'll get some rare shots. *Set-up/Tear down/line-check are great times to shoot. The bands often aren't moving much, the lights are often pretty decent, etc. Pictures don't make sound, we don't know we aren't playing. Plus it's nice to have some candid pictures. *Regardless of how many people are actually there, do your best to make it seem like there's a lot of people. This can be tricky sometimes, but if there's only 20 people there, pay close attention to your crops. However, if the place is packed, try and get a shot of the band from a few rows back to show the crowd, it looks good for us, and we'll probably get tons of miles out of that picture. Here's a little example on how you can make a show look more attended than it really was:  (There were only 5 people in the crowd at this show). *Contrary to popular belief, if you get a picture of us with a stupid face, send it along! We may not use it, but it's fun to get a laugh out of things. When I get home I'll show you an example of this. We may not buy the picture, but it'll help you stick out in our minds when we need a photog. (Just don't go out of your way trying to make us look silly.) Here's an example of a silly picture of me:  *If we're not on stage, but sitting together and chilling, try to snap a few shots without us noticing, good candid shots make for great promo pictures. Obviously, other standard shots we like: *Singing/interacting with the crowd *Band members crowd Surfing *Jump Shots *Swinging Guitars *Movement shots (The best way I find is to turn on your flash and set the exposure for 1-2 seconds. You get a lot of motion without all the blur). Example of some movement:  This really works well for high-energy music. Might not want to try it on indie bands, but I've had success with this style of shot with hardcore bands and pop-punk/rock bands. Not the greatest examples, but you should get the idea. AtomicManiac fucked around with this message at 07:29 on Oct 30, 2009 |
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Oct 29, 2009 18:44
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^^^^Thanks! This is really helpful. I guess I never thought about it before (too busy figuring out how to get AWESOME shots ) but it is the basis of selling anything: find out what your market wants.I would love to hear some more musicians chime in on this.
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Oct 29, 2009 21:22
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dreggory posted:^^^^Thanks! This is really helpful. I guess I never thought about it before (too busy figuring out how to get AWESOME shots One way to get a handle on what people like is to watch your photo stats like a hawk and keep tabs on what people are viewing the most and which photos are compelling people to view larger versions. Also, if you're on Facebook and have musicians as friends, you can learn a lot about what they like by what profile photos they choose. Even if it's not a photo you took, you can see what style of photo they like. But yeah, photos of the entire band are always gold. Thank god for the Tokina 11-16.
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Oct 29, 2009 21:34
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You can also keep your eyes peeled and see what ends up on myspace, and who actually approaches you and talks to you about your photographs... But really, if you're doing show photos, you shouldn't be expecting money unless you are shooting for at least a largeish alt-weekly or something. Doing proper promo shots is another thing entirely, at that point you are really just doing group portraiture, but with a bit more aesthetic overhead. dunno fucked around with this message at 00:36 on Oct 30, 2009 |
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Oct 30, 2009 00:31
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Oh, and for the musicians out there, if you want sweet jump shots, jump early and jump often and predictably. If you jump early in the set, then the photographers will know to look for that again. If you only jump once at the end of the set, 99% of the time, unless the photographer is a hardcore fan of the band and knows you'll do it, it'll never get photographed except by fluke. Also, bring your knees up to your chest for the illusion of crazy wicked jump height and don't be afraid to jump off the monitors or whatever for extra height. Jump shots work best on higher stages where the photographer can get a lower angle, much like how a lot of photos of Michael Jordan make him look like he's a million feet in the air because sideline photographers usually sit on the floor. Of course the smart photographer will recognize early on that there's potential for a jump shot and hunker down in a low position in anticipation. Guitar tosses: Try to telegraph the move by holding the guitar in the air first for a moment. When you do that, photographers will have their cameras ready and waiting because holding the guitar in the air is a cool pose that begs to be photographed. Just like jumps, if you pull the move out of nowhere, no one will have a chance to photograph it. It's not just for photographers either, you want to draw the crowd's attention so people will actually see your sweet moves instead of being fixated on the singer while you toss the guitar in the background and no one notices unless you gently caress up and your guitar goes sailing across the room. And don't wear brimmed hats on stage, god dammit! Nothing worse than a photo set full of faces in shadow. HPL fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Oct 30, 2009 |
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Oct 30, 2009 18:19
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  Those guys have the best stage managers I have ever worked with.
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Oct 31, 2009 05:56
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And I thought I was the only fan of bathrooms. HA! that's a fantastic bathroom. what city is it in? Dunno, what do you shoot with? those are great. Great post, maniac. I have found all your points to be true and learned a couple new ones. On a more meta note: I *try* to shoot for 'the ages'. My personal take is that rock photography should look like the era it comes from. Photographs are after all a historical document. I don't worry about whether or not my subjectmatter appears 'dated'. It's usually photo fads that make a photo look dated (you know, all those promo shots in the forest using flash?), not what the subject itself looks like. That's why I shoot lots of fan photos. People are just so appealing and can tell alot about what the band sounds like. Sick metal illustrator Daniel Shaw and poet Eric Springer.  So worth the bloody lip  Drop Dead (That's Don Walsh of Rusted Shut saluting in the background)  God bless AC/DC!
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Oct 31, 2009 18:55
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I shot a 2 day noise festival last weekend. Finishing up edits tonight and I'll pop some up later. I hate red stage lighting so so much.
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Oct 31, 2009 20:03
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spritely posted:And I thought I was the only fan of bathrooms. HA! that's a fantastic bathroom. what city is it in? Dunno, what do you shoot with? those are great. That's the recently closed Cobalt in Vancouver, BC. It was a strip club turned hardcore and metal bar that was also home to the city's experimental scene, it will be dearly missed. Usually I'm packing HP5 @ 1600 in an old Nikkormat FTn body. It takes a lickin' and keeps on tickin'.
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Oct 31, 2009 23:32
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I just shot my first show with lighting the other day for the local rock station's Halloween event. I actually kind of just showed up with my camera and got through, which was awesome. Fun show, fun band, I actually ended up on stage with them near the end. I was hoping I could get some critique - I was more concerned with capturing the mood of the event than getting faces and whatnot (I usually do try and get faces but I would have blown everything out due to the lighting). I also have other shots from open mics and whatnot on my website which I think are decent. Everything was shot with a Canon XTi and a 50 1.8. I realize a lot of shots are similar compositionally but that is mostly because the place was packed and they let me shoot standing on their speaker set to stage left. http://www.jyiphoto.com/Toxic%20Mouse/ Thanks! Oprah Haza fucked around with this message at 22:41 on Nov 1, 2009 |
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Nov 1, 2009 22:39
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Oprah Haza posted:I just shot my first show with lighting the other day for the local rock station's Halloween event. I actually kind of just showed up with my camera and got through, which was awesome. Fun show, fun band, I actually ended up on stage with them near the end. I was hoping I could get some critique - I was more concerned with capturing the mood of the event than getting faces and whatnot (I usually do try and get faces but I would have blown everything out due to the lighting). I also have other shots from open mics and whatnot on my website which I think are decent. Everything was shot with a Canon XTi and a 50 1.8. I realize a lot of shots are similar compositionally but that is mostly because the place was packed and they let me shoot standing on their speaker set to stage left. Not bad for a first try. I'd cut down the number of photos first of all. There's a bunch of blurry our out of focus shots that I think degrade the quality of work. Aside from that, did you edit these at all? The exposure is off on a lot of them and with a little editing they'd look a ton better. You also want to be mindful of "mic mouth", just watch where it is relative to their face. Overall not too bad though, the giant wig on that one guy kinda sucks as you can't see his eyes.
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Nov 2, 2009 01:19
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Oprah Haza posted:http://www.jyiphoto.com/Toxic%20Mouse/ I tried, but that url isn't pulling anything up. edit: now it works. I like some of them- the ones where you didn't use flash are pretty darn good. That 50 can only do so much, and you worked it. Good job. Eeek fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Nov 2, 2009 |
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Nov 2, 2009 01:49
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That 5th shot (girl in the crowd with a veil) is so money.
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Nov 2, 2009 02:47
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Thanks for the feedback guys, I'll keep the mic mouth/exposure stuff in mind. I hope to get to shoot another show fairly soon.
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Nov 2, 2009 04:07
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