How to Photograph Concerts (featuring Admiral Fallow)

As you may have seen in the last post, I got a photo pass to an Evening with Noel Fielding, which was absolutely brilliant. I did briefly mention in that post after I emailed every tour promoter and band manager for every gig in Aberdeen, that I got one response.

That was from Admiral Fallow's manager.

So I got to go to that gig for free :)

Anyway, since I was a complete amateur to gig photography, but here are the tips that I was so glad I knew and also what I found out whilst undertaking the photoshoot.

1. Set up your camera beforehand. Although the lighting will change as soon as the band come on, you won't have time to be messing about with manual mode.
2. Use a fast lens. The lighting is so low at concerts that a very low aperture is used since a fast shutter is necessary and you will not be allowed to use flash. I used a Nikkor AF-S 50mm f1.8, which is a good little prime lens. There are pros and cons of using a prime lens, the main con being the inability to zoom. However, it was a lot cheaper than any zoom sport lens that I could find. I got it used from Wex Photographic. 
3. Take as many shots as possible. Remember, you only have 3 songs. I wasn't looking at the back of my camera and I got several terrible shots which were just completely blurred, but I got a few good ones. The more shots you take the better chance you get of getting a good image. 
4. Find a good vantage point and don't be afraid to move to find a better one. I was zig zagging all around the place trying to find where was the best place.
5. Use a high ISO, a fast shutter and as low an aperture as you can get away with and if you can, shoot in RAW (always shoot in RAW, it will change your life and photography, if you don't already.). 

And now to the editing stages 

1. I used Lightroom. I have barely used Lightroom in the past year, due to my love of Photoshop and all the things it can do, but Lightroom is much easier so simple editing and especially batch processing.
2. Ever wondered why a lot of live music images are in black and white? Well that is because of the rubbish lighting and the noise and the fact that all that can be corrected by converting images to black and white. This also corrects any dodgy colours by removing them completely.
3. Editing in black and white is so much easier than editing in colour as the noise is reduced dramatically and there are no colours that need to be corrected.

If you think your images would work better in colour, then keep them that way.