Hit The Lights!

I’m going to start with a little bit about the way I shoot photos, all photos, but concerts in particular. After having many (many!) discussions with other photographers, I know I over-shoot. I let my cameras do their thing, shooting as much as ten shots a second in bursts. I do this because when there are performers on stage, lights are changing, people move, they blink, all kinds of things happen. Depending on where I’m located, how many people are on stage, etc, I can shoot anywhere from 3-400 to nearly 1,000 shots during a three-song photo set. Like I said, I know this is a lot, probably too many, but I want as much as possible to whittle down later.

And whittle I do. On average, I’ll end up with between 2-5% of what I shoot as “keepers”, stuff I edit and post for public consumption. To save you the math, that means if I shoot 500 photos, I will end up with between 10-25 shots that I’m happy enough to share. Sure, sometimes there’s more, sometime even less, but that’s about normal. And, honestly, that’s really enough. I used to post more, but they would get redundant, and who really wants to sort through three or four dozen nearly-identical repetitive shots?

Now, with all that groundwork being laid, with the scene being set for what’s normal, what’s typical, and what I can usually expect when I walk into a show, here’s the meat of my tale today: At the show I was shooting last night (I’m not naming names here!), the opening act had nearly non-existent lighting. I suppose it’s the aesthetic they wanted, but it was basically the type of lighting stage crews use to set up and tear down between scenes during productions when they don’t want the audience seeing anything under the curtain. Here’s a simple cellphone shot from the audience:

This isn’t a misrepresentation. Obviously the human eye can see more than a camera sensor, but this is what the whole set looked like. Going to back to where I started this, we were allowed to shoot the first three songs. So, even if I was shooting lightly, you’d expect 150, 200 shots, right?

Fourteen.

I took exactly fourteen photos during those three songs. And one of those is this one here, which I took because someone on the side-stage was using a small pocket-type flashlight to look through a tour case. Look at how much more light there is over there than on the performers!

I’m not a production manager. I’m not a lighting designer. I’m certainly not a publicist. I’m a guy that slings a couple of Canon cameras around and has been incredibly fortunate to have gotten to shoot some of the biggest names in music in an incredibly short time doing concert work. But if you’re reading this and you’re in a band, or you help in any way – promoting them, setting up, friends with them, whatever – please, pass along a little bit of unsolicited advice: if you want promotion, if you want publicity for your shows and you’re going to have photographers come in, please, turn on some lights! At least for the first three songs, or whatever you allow to be shot. It makes for better shots if they’re not all completely coloured lights, too – reds and blues shoot terribly, and you’ll end up with a lot of black and white photos – but even if that’s what you want, at least turn them on.

That’s my little miniature rant/story for the day. Thanks for tuning in!