Shooting a friends Concert

j-digg · Mar 30, 2009

My friend recently got a chance to play at a bluesfest at a casino, which was a relatively big venue for him. I got to get an all access pass to photograph the whole show. (I'm not trying to sell him or anything) but if you have some spare time you should check him out at myspace under "Brandon Scott Sellner" he's simply amazing on guitar, and is a very talented songwriter - all at 24. Anyhow, here are a few of my favorite shots I found while scanning through them all, with little to no PP done.

1. I really like this one A LOT.. but I really wish I would've got his second hand completely in the shot. Also I dont know if the DoF works the best in this one. At this point I was shooting at ISO 400, waiting for strong light, perhaps I shouldve just upped it to 800 and used a smaller aperture.

2. One of my other favorites, just wish I wouldve gotten alittle more of him in the shot.

I will probably post more as I find ones I really like out of the bunch. Any concert shooting tips or links will be appreciated as well as C&C, thanks for looking.

sly677 · Mar 30, 2009

Those are nice shots. I also will be shooting a friend's concert in a few weeks it's going to be in a small club with poor lighting. What kind of setup did you have, what lens did you use?

j-digg · Mar 31, 2009

Thank you sly.. I have a realllly cheap set up actually haha. I have an XSi with the kit 18-55 a 55-250 cheapo, and the 50mm 1.8. Most of the usable shots came from the 50mm. The large aperture came in handy for the low light of course, but you just have to watch the shallow DoF on the closer shots. Also I had an all access pass, so I was able to go anywhere I wanted to, which is why I was able to get many different angles with the prime lens. I reccommend trying out and seeing how well your camera performs at higher ISO, most of my pics at this concert were at 800, and they turned out pretty decent. I tried to keep the shutter speed at or faster than 1/80 - they moved around a decent amount but not anything too crazy. Try to get yourself familiar with manual mode and spot metering. You dont have to use spot, but then the camera will tell you that youre under exposing, which is fine because the background of most shots will be very dark or black. Just mess around with the exposure to make sure you get the person you are photographing comes out the way you want them to.

sly677 · Mar 31, 2009

Thanks alot for the info j-digg, I'll make sure to pack my 50mm lens when I go. The concert is in a small club so I should not have much trouble moving around and getting close to the stage. Depending how it turns out and if I have photos worth keeping I be sure to post some on here.
Thanks again.

Sly