Lessons learned from my first concert shoot
I've had my eye on shooting concert photography to broaden my events portfolio for a while, and I recently got a chance to give it a go at my friend's show for his band, Karass. Alex is a friend of mine that I play football and softball with, and when his band released their EP I wanted to get some shots of them performing live. I was interested to see if I could even capture shots that sufficiently told the story of the performance, so this was a portfolio-building opportunity instead of an event that I charged for.
I used my trusty 85mm f1.8 lens for this shoot. This is my go-to lens when shooting indoors since I need to have that wide-open aperture to maximize the light coming into the camera. Most of these shots were in my sports photography range of shutter speed too, but I did also try lowering it a bit to see how that looked. The title picture on this post was 1/25 second shutter speed which I would say is too slow with the blurry hand on the lead singer, but still makes for a cool effect. The pic below on the drummer was 1/320 second and even that is maybe slightly too slow... but I do really think the stick in multiple places is intriguing and worth exploring more:
Boosting the ISO higher than my usual operating range was also a must considering I shot without flash. A lot of photographers are worried about shooting on high ISOs because of the increased grain that occurs, but I don't particularly mind it for this session in particular as it does suit the alternative rock sound that Karass has just fine. Not everything has to be crisp and clear because alternative rock and Karass is not - that's the nature of the art and its live performance. The lack of perfection also gives more permission to experiment with colors too. Consider the recent blog post from Brian's birthday where I was using the color tools in Lightroom to try and disguise the colors coming through the TVs surrounding the room I was shooting in. Here, it's the opposite - I'm OK with exploring more of the color because that's true to life. It's character and intrigue and an escape from normal life. Even if it was a school night.
This shoot was also a lesson in being more fluid with changes on the fly. Each of the band members had different light on them - three of the band members were in pink and purple lights with varying intensities and distances from the camera itself, and the fourth member was in bright white light like a spotlight:
Each burst of photos required its own changes to my camera settings - this one in particular was lowering the exposure dial and maybe increasing the shutter speed a tad - and then immediately swapping back to the settings I had previously to get a different band member that was giving great energy in a new way. It truly was an exercise in agility and fluidity. I will say that one of the features I love most about the Nikon ZF that I shoot with is the clicky dials. something very satisfying about that and making those adjustments. So for that reason I don't mind making these changes on the fly quickly and frequently.
This is definitely something I'm interested in the future - I think settings deserve some tweaks to get a more consistent library across the shoot but overall this was a great time and a nice change of pace from my usual content. I have had my eye on some effects filters that I can add to the end of my lens for some neat in-camera effects that would fit well with concert photography, so maybe I'll consider picking one or two up to see if I enjoy that for a future shoot,
