Real World Concert Photography at Photoshop World

Admit it. You see the con­cert pho­tos that some­one else took and you wish you could do it. You wish you had the access. You want to get the shots that other peo­ple can’t get because the only cam­era they can sneak inside a show is a lit­tle point & shoot or an iPhone. Nei­ther one of those is going to get the shot you want. It’s more almost an exer­cise in frus­tra­tion. You want to be closer. I know how you feel because I’ve been there. Here’s an exam­ple of my best shot at a Billy Joel concert.

Breath­tak­ing, isn’t it? I can’t imag­ine why mag­a­zine edi­tors aren’t knock­ing on my door ask­ing for more shots of the backs of people’s heads. All of that grain just adds to the atmos­phere, too. That’s what I had to tell myself. I never expected that I’d get a chance to shoot at a con­cert because I didn’t know how to get access.

Thanks to Alan Hess and Scott Diussa, I now have a bit of infor­ma­tion to help get over that hur­dle and start get­ting some shots. Alan and Scott were the instruc­tors at the Real World Con­cert Pho­tog­ra­phy pre-​conference ses­sion at Pho­to­shop World. We spent half a day learn­ing the Do’s and Don’ts of pho­tograph­ing live music, get­ting some prac­ti­cal hands-​on expe­ri­ence with a live band, and fol­low­ing up on post-​processing. I didn’t quite know what to expect, but the day exceeded any­thing I could’ve made-​up.

About 40 of us filled the class with a pretty mix of peo­ple. Alan and Scott took us through the motions and we learned:

• Who to ask for access
• Where to look to find those peo­ple to ask
• How to make the request (keep it simple)
• Know that there needs to be some­thing in it for them, too
• What kind of pass to request
• What kind of shows may be bet­ter for a begin­ner to get access
• What kind of gear you need (think High ISO sen­sor and fast glass)
• EARPLUGS!
• How to meter and expose for low-​light/​fast action con­di­tions of a concert
• What to do before the show
• Where to go when you get there
• What to do just before the show begins
• How much time do you have to shoot?
• How do you com­pose your shots?

All of that, and more, got pumped into our brains before we headed down­stairs to the show floor. I know what you’re think­ing. You’re won­der­ing why I don’t share all of that infor­ma­tion here, right? Mostly because it took us a few hours to go through it all and it would take a lot of time to share here. Also, to give you some incen­tive to learn this infor­ma­tion the right way from Alan & Scott at the next Pho­to­shop World in Las Vegas. If my expe­ri­ence is any indi­ca­tion, this is a pre-​conference that NAPP will repeat a few times. Bet­ter you learn from the guys who do this for a liv­ing than me, some­one who still needs to put it into practice.

I’ll tell you this lit­tle tid­bit, though. Before we left the class­room, Alan was telling us that he always sets his gear at home before he heads to the show. I should’ve picked up on that tip, because I didn’t set my gear in the class. I assumed we’d be there ahead of the show start. Yeah, I got that wrong. As we approached the stage from a l-​o-​n-​g way back, they kicked off the first song. The 40 of us started run­ning to the stage to get our shots. Some peo­ple had their cam­era in hand, but not all of us. I had to park near an empty chair and put my 70 – 200 lens on my Nikon D700 while other folks were already shooting.

It’s no fun com­ing up at the tail-​end of a group effort, but things evened out quickly. The band, Big Elec­tric Cat, played three songs to give us some prac­tice shoot­ing in the stan­dard for­mat for con­certs. Three songs and you’re out. Blame Bruce Spring­steen for start­ing that nonsense.

Remem­ber some of those great con­cert shots from the 60’s and 70’s? You’re not going to see that kind of his­tory any­more because of the three-​song rule. Some­times you won’t get three songs. You may get two. You may get one. You may show up and dis­cover they’ve changed their mind and you can’t shoot any­thing at all. Up yours, Bruce.

Dur­ing Pho­to­shop World, one of the pio­neers of con­cert pho­tog­ra­phy — Jim Mar­shall — passed away. Some of the guys there looked up to Jim, and some knew him. He’s the guy who caught those iconic moments like Jimi Hen­drix light­ing his Strat on fire. Like I said, that kind of his­tory is dead. John Mayer posted some­thing on his blog about Jim’s pass­ing. The pub­li­cists don’t want to see sweaty shots of their acts and they don’t trust the pho­tog­ra­phers any­more. I guess there are some peo­ple you can’t trust, but I try not to post any­thing that makes some­one look bad. I don’t see the point of doing that.

I digress.

After cussing Bruce Springsteen’s name and get­ting my cam­era gear ready, I launched myself into the pit with 40 of my new BFF’s and started shoot­ing. It seems like three songs can go pretty quick. Some­thing else I noticed is that I wasn’t lis­ten­ing to the music the same way as if I were just enjoy­ing the show. Instead of singing along or just groov­ing out, I’m lis­ten­ing to the beat for queues to sig­nal a musi­cian may be about to change up, or hold a pose while a note plays out. Some­thing like that. The music ceased being enter­tain­ment and instead became a tool for me to time my shots. At the end of three songs, it was almost as I didn’t hear them. I felt them and used them, but it was a strange switch in the men­tal process between being a spec­ta­tor and now being a kind of par­tic­i­pant in the performance.

The band took a brief break and that gave us a chance to gather our thoughts. With­out the brisk pace of keep­ing up with the show, we could then think about what we’d like to do dif­fer­ent, how to visu­al­ize shots we wanted and line up to get them, and maybe change gear. At this point, I should’ve changed my CF card.

I was shoot­ing with a Hood­man RAW 16GB 300x card. That thing usu­ally lasts me for a whole shoot at other activ­i­ties. Not this time. I’d filled it up by the mid­dle of the fourth song and, once again, missed shoot­ing part of the show while I switched to another card. While fig­ur­ing out what to do on the next three songs, I didn’t check my card space. I should have, though. Sadly, my other cards were Kingston 8 GB 133x cards and I could feel the slow-​down while shoot­ing. That’s why I bought another Hood­man RAW 16GB card (now at 675x speed).

I walked out of there with about 675 shots. We went back to class and talked about the expe­ri­ence, but also to learn what hap­pens after the shoot. Alan told us that real con­cert pho­tog­ra­phers have real dead­lines. To sim­u­late that, we had to pick ONE shot to sub­mit for a con­test to win a brand new Nikon D300s and lens. The instruc­tors and Scott Kelby would pick their best three, and then the audi­ence for the Pho­to­shop World Keynote would choose the win­ner by applause. I’ll save you any sus­pense and say that my shot wasn’t one of the final three, but I did really like the ones that were selected.

Sooner or later, it had to come up. Some­one asked about the kind of money you make as a con­cert shooter. Alan answered hon­estly — not much. This is some­thing you do for the love of it, not to get rich. You may shoot for a wire ser­vice, a news/​magazine out­let, or maybe a pub­li­cist. None of them are going to pay you out­ra­geous sums of money for the shots, though. You need to stalk Tiger Woods for that kind of money.

I can’t cover every­thing in this blog post. Well, I sup­pose I could, but I’m not going to do that because I want to go to bed. I have a day job that requires I wake-​up at OMG:30 and it’s get­ting late. What I can say in clos­ing is that I had a blast. I learned quite a bit, both from the lessons and the prac­ti­cal expe­ri­ence. Now I’m psy­ched to go try this at some local venues. I’ve been warned to expect to hear “no” a lot, but some­times, I’ll get the photo pass. Then it’s up to me to make it hap­pen. What more can you ask?