Last weekend we have been out to a music festival. A two day festival of which the first day with my own band. Your own band? Eh yes and no. I don not play on stage but am the light technician since about 12 years now with these guys. Danielle has been photographing the whole show and since I'm friends with all these guys a model release for every one of them will follow, so you will be seeing the photo's here also.
Photographing bands always brings you a lot of uncertainties. Will there be enough light, will my shutter speed be sufficient, will I be able to work with higher apertures etc. On all these points you have an uncontrolled factor, the lights and the movement of the band.
If you have to go up on ISO be sure to know what ratio is acceptable for your cam before you get to much annoying noise. With our 5D it is easy, we can go up to 800 ISO easily. Above that also but we will have to use a noise reduction afterwards. If you are up to 800 at say 2.8 Aperture better not go to 1600 so you can close your aperture more. You will find that you are only making yourself more work.
Look at the movement of the band, try to anticipate their moves and maybe move your cam with them if they do to create great moving backgrounds while your subject is frozen.
Keep you eye on the band your focus all the time to catch the best moments. Make sure your shutter speed and aperture is set, when the band does something interesting you must be ready.
When you shoot band members try to keep the lighting on his back, that comes from the stage, behind him. If you let to bright light into your lens it will form a star and probably give you unwanted flares over your subject. Keeping the light behind your subject it will also create a sort of hair light which is always pretty.
Good luck,
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Dnf-style
Hobby, you are welcome.
Achilles they are called Gail Of God and you'll find them following our website and adding /recent to it. Go to the map called Booch?
Bouch: Since I work for these guys I will get modelrelease of all of them and we will upload some dark live material soon. As soon as we have new bandwidth that it, because that stinks here in Belgium.
Thanks for your thoughts friends.
Ellenboughn
These concert images are hard to come by and very usable. Keep shooting them!
Achilles
What band, what band? Advertise them a little bit, give us free CDs, etc. :)
I love the stage lighting and the mood it gives to the model, transforming him/her into an icon.
Kenneystudios
This is a good tip for events in general, too. A lot of public events have harsh lights than can create unwanted lens flare. Thanks for the tip!