Concert photography

I'm a pretty big music fan. I'm an even bigger fan of Dave Matthews Band. I try to see them every year they come to the Bay Area. This year though, they weren't just putting on a normal concert -- with normal concert ticket prices. No, they were headlining the second night of the Outside Lands festival in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. The tickets were too much for me to consider, so I decided I would try to photograph my first major concert for the paper I work for. This gets me in for free, in front of the front row and allows me to bring in my camera equipment.



First thing's first, I needed to ask permission. I'm not a staff photographer at the paper, I'm a graphic designer, so I needed to make sure it was OK for me to use the paper's name to get credentials. I asked the Entertainment Editor and Features Editor and got the go. If any of you are wanting to do the same, go for it. Get to know your local Entertainment Editor or music writer and when something comes up, just ask to see if they want any photos. You may get lucky. Next for me was research.



I know the Dave Matthews Band's music well, so I didn't need to listen to it to get a feel for it, but if you are shooting an act you don't know, I'd suggest getting some of their stuff. The thought behind this is similar to sports photography. You can anticipate what's coming. This way your photography is proactive instead of reactive. You don't want to miss that cool moment because you didn't know what was coming next.

One thing I didn't know was the three-song rule. The photographers are allowed in the pit for the first three songs and that's it. The only exception is the official event photographers (or the venue's house photographer). So you need to shoot fast. Plus, knowing this, you seem a little more cool -- like you've done this before -- when they tell you this while picking up your press pass.



Another thing you want to do is shoot the opener(s). If this is your first time shooting a major concert it will allow you to know where you can go to get the good angles for the headliner. The pit is usually less crowded so you can get some really good stuff without worrying about getting in someone's way. Plus, this opener may get huge someday and you will have these great shots of them from back in the day. I shot Jason Mraz for practice. Now, he's pretty big already, but it still gave me the chance to practice, especially since he's a guitar player like Dave Matthews. I also shot the Black Eyed Peas but they were useless as practice since none of them are anchored to instruments.



I think the most important thing you can do for concert photography is to shoot in manual mode. For my DMB photos, I shot them all at 800 ISO, 1/250 f/2.8 with a 70-200 lens. If I had shot in one of the automatic modes, then the light meter would have been thrown off due to the lighting. Better to find a middle ground and let the lights either over- or under-expose the photos. They usually look pretty good and if you really need to, you can try to fix little exposure errors in post.



There are a few things that I'll have to keep in mind for the next time I do this.

1. I'd shoot at ISO 400 and 1/125 so I don't have as much noise in the photos. With an IS lens, this shouldn't be too tough.
2. A second camera. I only have one body, but I'd rent another so I could get some wide-angle shots without wasting time changing lenses. The lighting rig was impressive when you looked straight up and I had a cool shot in mind with Dave Matthews dwarfed by the lights.
3. I need to be a bit more pushy. Not rude, but if there's a shot I want, I need to just do it. I had wanted to stand on the little ledge in front of the barricades to get a little higher over the stage. The problem was that I didn't want to piss off the fans in the front. That's fine, but I'd only stand on the ledge for about 5 seconds at most, so I should have just done it. Since I didn't, I don't have any good shots of the drummer.
4. Cards, I must remember business cards. I had them in my camera bag, but since the space is tight in the pit, I didn't bring my bag with me. I met a lot of cool people in there and they share the same passion for music and photography that I do, so keeping in contact would have been nice.