Gig Photography 101

Music pho­to­graphy, for many people any­way, seems like the ideal job. Get­ting in front of the front row and listen­ing to some of your favor­ite bands play, in return for simply tak­ing a few pic­tures. After all that you cel­eb­rate a great show with the band and enjoy all the drinks/drugs/groupies (delete as appro­pri­ate) you desire.

So, to begin this little guide I’m going to smash some of these pre­con­cep­tions, and if you’re still inter­ested then there will be some tips to help you along your way. I will be assum­ing you know at least roughly what the but­tons on your cam­era do and that you have a fairly decent under­stand­ing of com­mon pho­to­graphy terms and tech­niques — if you don’t I’d sug­gest get­ting very famil­iar with your cam­era as soon as is phys­ic­ally pos­sible. So, let’s get going…

What to Expect

Ven­ues vary greatly in terms of their qual­ity, both aur­ally and visu­ally. You could be any­where between huge, expens­ive light­ing rigs — per­haps even encom­passing pyro­tech­nics — at the big fest­ivals, sta­di­ums and pur­pose built ven­ues right through to the most basic fluor­es­cent light­ing with £20 worth of mobile DJ kit down the local. The prob­lem isn’t really in the light­ing itself though, it’s more down to the fact it’ll be chan­ging all the time.

You’re also unlikely to have a lot of room to man­oeuvre either. If you are the proud owner of some photo accred­it­a­tion for the gig, then things look good — you should have the use of the pit for a little while. If there is no pit at the venue, you’ll be shoot­ing from the crowd, where mov­ing can be easy or com­pletely out of the ques­tion, depend­ing on the size of crowd.

That’s if you get in of course. Although most act’s real­ise that a cam­era is not a bad thing to have at a gig, secur­ity will prob­ably have a hard time with let­ting you in with a DSLR if you’re without accred­it­a­tion: If you don’t have the pass, leave it at home and smuggle in the com­pact instead. Oh, and remem­ber to turn the flash off — all the flashes going off will dis­tract the per­formers, apparently.

In the pit, it’s going to be tougher than it looks. You have a good 1m (3ft) between the bar­ri­ers and the stage, which sounds ample until you see the secur­ity guys take their places. It’ll also be very loud and depend­ing on the act in ques­tion, it could poten­tially be quite wet as well — strangely, people think bands actu­ally like hav­ing beer thrown at them, while many oth­ers think their pint is going to be safe on the edge of the bar­rier next to the cam­era gear you spent your sav­ings on. But don’t worry, you’ll only be there for about 10 minutes — three songs and you’re outta there!

Still with me? Cool, let’s move on…

Deal­ing With It

The lack of light is the biggest prob­lem with most ven­ues. There are a couple of ways around this — you can use a flash, open up the aper­ture in the lens or increase the ISO — and none of them are ideal solu­tions, not least because in many ven­ues one of them (flash) is often banned*.

* Why is it banned? The main reason that’s cited is because it dis­tracts the crowd and the per­formers. I can kind-of see that, although when most mod­ern light­ing sys­tems in these places have strobe light­ing it kicks that excuse right out the win­dow. I wouldn’t argue the point if told there’s to be no-flash pho­to­graphy though, unless you fancy being politely told to piss off…

Route 1: Bet­ter Lenses

Open­ing up the aper­ture seems like a very good solu­tion, if you have the lens to do it. Cheaper lenses (and often the kit lenses that come with the cam­era) will have a max­imum aper­ture of around f3.5 — although pho­to­graphy in this envir­on­ment will be pos­sible, it will neces­sit­ate the use of very high ISO set­tings to get a usable expos­ure, and unless you have a very good cam­era this will likely res­ult in unac­cept­ably noisy shots. To get the best res­ults, an aper­ture of at least f2.8 will be required. For­tu­nately, a lens with a wide aper­ture isn’t always going to break the bank — you can pick up lenses with a fixed focal length of 50mm (which for­tu­nately is a pretty good focal length for most gig pur­poses) and an aper­ture of f1.8 for most cam­era brands for less than £150 — look around on eBay,  Craigslist and Gumtree.

The only issue I can think of — and I’m nit-picking a little here — is when you have bands that move on stage a lot. When you widen the aper­ture on the lens, you also nar­row the depth of field, which means that you run the risk of an out of focus shot should your sub­ject move a little back­wards or for­wards. I have a 30mm f1.4 lens I use quite a bit, and with that kind of aper­ture you can very eas­ily have someone’s eyes in focus and their ears com­pletely blurred; the depth of field really is that nar­row. It’s very tricky to use, but not com­pletely out of the ques­tion if you can time things just right, and that just comes with a little bit of prac­tice and a lot of luck.

Route 2: Increas­ing the Sensitivity

As men­tioned earlier, increas­ing the sens­it­iv­ity (the ISO, some­times called the ASA) of the sensor or the film is likely to be required, whatever cam­era or lens you have. There is a dir­ect trade off with this — by increas­ing the sens­it­iv­ity of the sensor or film, you need less light to get a decent expos­ure, and as a res­ult can use the cam­era in darker con­di­tions than usual; the down­side is that you increase noise (if you have a digital cam­era) or grain (for film). You really want to keep this as low as is pos­sible without get­ting blurry shots due to cam­era shake, but not too high as to increase the noise so much that you lose detail in the image. This isn’t too tricky for digital users — after all, we can change the ISO at will, with the touch of a but­ton and exper­i­ment as the show goes on — but film users won’t have this lux­ury. Per­son­ally, I take many of my live shots at either ISO 1600 or 3200, so a film of that kind of speed would likely be a good start­ing point; ISO 800 would be the bare min­imum. For digital users the same advice applies, but I would sug­gest not going too far above ISO 3200 with more basic DSLR’s as it’s unlikely that any­thing usable will result.

Route 3: Flash

That leaves using flash, should you be allowed. Per­son­ally, I don’t bother with mine even when I am allowed to use it, as I find that the harsh light from the flash can ruin the mood very eas­ily. How­ever, as long as they are used prop­erly they can be very use­ful addi­tions to the kit bag.

Firstly, you will need to remove the flash from the hot-shoe of the cam­era and use either a wire­less sys­tem or an off-camera cable to trig­ger it instead — using the flash with it poin­ted dir­ectly at the per­formers will res­ult in very well exposed, but ulti­mately very bor­ing images. By tak­ing it off the cam­era, you can dir­ect it so that it comes in from many other angles, which can res­ult in much more inter­est­ing res­ults. There is cer­tainly some con­sid­er­able skill involved with this which is well bey­ond the scope of this guide, but a brief search of the inter­net should yield many use­ful guides on how to get the best from flash units.

Another neat trick that can be used to emphas­ise move­ment is to use what’s called Rear-Sync flash. Usu­ally, when the shut­ter of the cam­era opens the flash will fire at pre­cisely the same time in order to illu­min­ate the sub­ject and freeze any move­ment, which also often res­ults in the bor­ing shots men­tioned earlier. How­ever, when using Rear-Sync the flash will fire near the end of the expos­ure, frac­tion­ally before the shut­ter closes back up again. It’s a very subtle dif­fer­ence, and if you use a shorter shut­ter speed it’s not likely you’ll even notice it, but try­ing it when using slightly longer expos­ures than nor­mal yields much cooler res­ults. What will hap­pen is you’ll get lots of motion blur, as if you had too long a shut­ter speed but super­im­posed over the top of it will be the moment when the flash fired — you’re sub­ject will appear frozen, but you will also see the motion blur, which gives the sen­sa­tion of movement.

Work­ing Blind

Before going to a gig one day, try this — for a laugh, if any­thing. I want you to set the ISO to 100, and the meter­ing mode to the mat­rix (or wide) meter­ing mode. Easy peasy. Now, let’s switch it back to a more gig-friendly spot meter­ing and to ISO 3200 without look­ing at your cam­era. Trick­ier, huh?

This is one thing that you’ll need to get used to. After a while with your cam­era, you will just get used to how it works, with all it’s little foibles and intric­a­cies, but doing all this when it’s tricky to see prop­erly is another thing entirely. All the lights in the build­ing are likely to be point­ing at the stage when you’re mess­ing with your cam­era, ren­der­ing the little mark­ings on the dials and but­tons nigh on use­less. Learn­ing where everything is situ­ated is pretty vital stuff.

But why? Pretty simple really. Most big­ger bands and ven­ues have an unwrit­ten rule that all pho­to­graph­ers must obey, the aptly named ‘three-song rule’. For the slower chil­dren at the back, this means you will only be allowed to shoot the first three songs of the act’s set; once those songs are fin­ished, you are kindly told to vacate the pit. The three-song rule is in place simply as a means for the crowd to enjoy the show without us get­ting in the way. We prob­ably got in for noth­ing, so why should a pay­ing fan get third rate treat­ment? I think it’s fair enough to be hon­est, but the down­side is that it gives you pre­cious little time to deliver the goods.

So, no pres­sure then… unless of course you have per­mis­sion to shoot the whole show, you lucky thing.

Tips and Tricks

Cam­era tech­nique wise, that’s about it really. From here, it’s simply a case of hav­ing an eye for a good photo, which isn’t some­thing I can teach you really — that’s down to your instincts. What I can offer now though is a few tips for sur­vival, learn­ing from my own and many oth­ers’ mistakes.

Firstly, earplugs are vital. If you’ve been to a live show before, you have prob­ably had a ringing in your ears for a little while after­wards — per­fectly nor­mal, if a little annoy­ing. Ima­gine hav­ing it per­man­ently. I have — it’s a con­di­tion known as tin­nitus, and although its far from ser­i­ous it is extremely annoy­ing when try­ing to get to sleep. It is also incur­able, so for your own sakes get some earplugs, and wear them at live shows. The foam ones are per­fectly fine and will lower the volume to a safe level but they will muffle the sound more. I used to have reusable ones, which you just have to wash with soap and water after using them — they also bring the levels down but will still be clear enough to enjoy the music. You’ll quite eas­ily be able to hold a con­ver­sa­tion with them too; they are not as intrus­ive as some people think. I’ve now got some cus­tom made ones which reduce the volume to a safe level without it being muffled — expens­ive, but well worth it if you plan on doing this a lot.

Dur­ing the show, just keep shoot­ing. Some gig pho­to­graph­ers I know often advise new­bies to study the light­ing, as usu­ally they fol­low a set pat­tern. If you know this pat­tern, you can pre­dict when the light­ing will change and com­pose the shot accord­ingly. Now while this is per­fectly valid advice, I don’t tend to bother. Con­cen­trate on get­ting a solid com­pos­i­tion, and try to pre­dict what the per­formers are going to do, and if the lights hit at just the right moment, con­sider buy­ing the light­ing guys a pint.

The cam­era bag should be kept well organ­ised. Know where everything is, as time is of the essence. Don’t bother with lens caps, just keep the hoods on and put them hood first to the bot­tom of the bag — provided you gave the lenses a little dust-off before the show it’s unlikely they’ll be dirty enough to be prob­lem­atic and it means there won’t be any embar­rass­ing moments when you try and take shots, won­der­ing all the while why you can’t see any­thing in the viewfinder…

On the sub­ject of lenses, don’t believe all the rub­bish about ‘pro­tect­ive’ fil­ters. Unless you get a very expens­ive one, they will degrade image qual­ity to an extent but more wor­ry­ingly, it will also be more likely to cause lens flare — unsightly marks form­ing as the light comes into the lens at a more acute angle than it should be. A solid plastic lens hood will be bet­ter pro­tec­tion (unless you very neatly drop the cam­era lens first onto a mic stand — you mup­pet) and it will be cheaper to replace should you bash it off something.

Memory cards should really be kept on your per­son rather than in the cam­era bag. They’re small, can eas­ily be kept in a pocket and it saves fan­ny­ing about in the corner of the stage with the cam­era gear. I have a sys­tem at longer con­certs as well — I keep my unused cards in my front-right pocket and the full ones in my rear-right — it’s easier put­ting stuff in the right hand pock­ets with your right hand, while also keep­ing them sep­ar­ate. South­paws may want to reverse that one, but you could be put­ting the full cards in your shoes for all it mat­ters, as long as they’re kept sep­ar­ate. Bat­ter­ies might be worth keep­ing on you too: Even the worst ones should get you through the space of a show, but they are small,  they’re not going to be too intrus­ive and if you do need to swap them over you can do so quickly.

Chances are you won’t be car­ry­ing your kit bag around when work­ing, so find a safe place to keep it so it’s handy, but so no-one will pinch it. I find that just off to the side of the stage is best, espe­cially if there’s secur­ity about. When there’s a pit, make sure no-one will trip on it, and if you have one pull up the water­proof cover — beer and water will land up find­ing their way in that dir­ec­tion. It’s also worth invest­ing in a small Maglite for see­ing inside in the event you need to look for some­thing inside — I have mine on a little clip in the top com­part­ment, so I don’t lose it.

Leave the tri­pod at home, but think about bring­ing a mono­pod (basic­ally a single leg of a tri­pod). It will allow you to keep the cam­era stead­ier than nor­mal which in low light will be very handy. I would only con­sider it for per­formers who do not tend to move around stage much though, as it can still be a little unwieldy.

Drummer’s can be a pain to pho­to­graph, but they’re a vital part of any band, so it’s worth try­ing to get some shots of them. If the stage allows a side-on view, that’s prob­ably the best bet for get­ting a clean shot of them — if not you’d be best to move between the singer and gui­tar­ist and shoot between them. A long lens is handy here, and rear-sync flash can be used to good effect as well.

Never pho­to­graphed one of the bands on the billing before? Chances are some of the crowd have seen them live before — ask them what they’re like. Do they move about a lot or do they stand still star­ing at effects ped­als all night? Do they do any­thing par­tic­u­larly inter­est­ing at cer­tain points in the show, like crowd surf­ing before the big solo? It may even be worth research­ing them before the show and listen­ing to what they do, just to give you an idea of what to expect on the night. You­tube is your friend.

On a sim­ilar note, be cour­teous to fel­low pho­to­graph­ers in the pit. Des­pite what I said about mono­pods being handy earlier, if there are other people there just don’t use it. You’ll only be get­ting in the way. Same goes for your belong­ings — keep them well out of the way so people don’t trip on them.

Don’t be an ass-hat. Don’t stand up on the secur­ity podi­ums on the bar­rier — you’re get­ting in the way of the crowd and piss­ing off secur­ity.  Don’t get in the way of other pho­to­graph­ers’ shots either as it’s a sure fire way of los­ing a tooth; the people on stage may be fam­ous, but that does not mean you can behave like the paparrazi.

Finally, just chill out. Relax. Have some fun. Everything will be just okay if you trust in your instincts and abilities.

Get­ting Other Gigs

Thus far, we’ve assumed you’ve actu­ally got­ten into a gig, as it’s not a par­tic­u­larly dif­fi­cult area to actu­ally start out in should you know the right people. Per­haps a little explan­a­tion is required as to how I got the big­ger gigs.

The key to this isn’t skill as such (though hav­ing great pho­tos is cer­tainly a big asset), rather it is know­ing the right people. I star­ted out by pho­to­graph­ing Stolen Order, a local band in my area. Not a huge band by any stretch of the ima­gin­a­tion (as of the time of writ­ing any­way), but they have a decent sized and loyal fan­base, are able to attract a few punters in the door, and see­ing as I have been friends with the lead singer for well over a dec­ade it wasn’t exactly an issue get­ting in to take a few pho­tos. Often, they would be shar­ing the billing with other bands (again mainly local bands) whom I’ve also got­ten to know. Gradu­ally, they’ve pro­gressed from play­ing to a few people in com­munity centres to sup­port­ing other estab­lished bands, where I’ve been able to chat with pro­moters and venue staff… you can prob­ably see where this is going.

As you may ima­gine, this is exactly the way many other gig pho­to­graph­ers have star­ted their careers. If you are still in school, you are at the ideal age to start get­ting stuck in there and get net­work­ing — chances are someone you know is think­ing of or has already star­ted a band, and if they want to make a go of it they will need pic­tures. If not, don’t fret — just sup­port your local scene and show up at a few local con­certs; the tick­ets will cost but­tons, if they’re even char­ging for entry, so you have everything to gain and noth­ing to lose.

Altern­at­ively, there’s another method — asking.

Ser­i­ously.

Air­bourne were play­ing at a venue near to me not too long ago — I just emailed them using the address they had on their site and asked who would be best to talk to about get­ting passes for the event, and after con­vers­ing with a rather lovely lady on their label for a bit, she replied say­ing “yep, you’re on the guestlist”.

There is a few things to be care­ful of though. You have to remem­ber that the odds are pretty good that they people you’re email­ing are used to people try­ing to blag their way into shows. They don’t want every man, woman and dormouse in the pit, they want them to pay money at the door, oth­er­wise they don’t get paid them­selves. Simply send them an email ask­ing who would be the best per­son to ask about photo access would be, and when you find out email that per­son. Provide a link to any work you’ve done and remain pro­fes­sional through­out. Some­thing along the lines of:

“Hello. My name is Dave Jones, and I’m a gig pho­to­grapher in the area where The Runs will be play­ing on Tues­day 1^st April. I was won­der­ing if it would be pos­sible for me to take a few shots on the night? Many thanks for your time“

You don’t have to be too formal, but be friendly and not pushy. It’s not a CV you’re writ­ing, but at least make it sound like you’ve had a basic edu­ca­tion. Thank them for tak­ing the time to read the email, and when they reply thank them for that too — they’re mak­ing an effort they don’t actu­ally have to go to, and you really should appre­ci­ate that. If you get the gig, double check if they have any rules other than ‘the usual three-songs with no flash’ as well (that just re-enforces the notion that you know what you’re on about — which you should do if you’ve read this far), and it may be worth see­ing if their per­mis­sion cov­ers the sup­port as well — if not then you’ll need to go through the same thing if you want to shoot them as well.

Chances are, they’ll still say no to you. Pro­moters are busy people, and unless you are offer­ing them some­thing that’ll bene­fit their cli­ents (the bands) they’re not inter­ested. They don’t care about your port­fo­lio, or about you get­ting prac­tice — noth­ing per­sonal, it’s just they’ve got no gain from it. Ideally, you need to be work­ing for a news­pa­per or a magazine, or some­times a pic­ture library/agency to get into big­ger gigs. It’s well worth approach­ing local news­pa­pers, music blogs and freesheets to see if they’ll vouch for you if asked — if you’re provid­ing pic­tures to a news­pa­per, pro­moters sud­denly start becom­ing inter­ested. Make sure the people using the shots pay you though…

Small bands, espe­cially local ones, should be no prob­lem get­ting passes for, but big­ger bands (espe­cially more egot­ist­ical ones) will get tricky. Care­ful if they start hand­ing over things for you to sign — read them care­fully, as some of them are designed to take away your rights to use the images, ren­der­ing your efforts point­less. Momma always said to read the small print…

Finito

So, hope­fully this little lot has helped some­what in eas­ing any fears before a big night. It’s basic­ally everything I’ve learned over the course of the few years or so I’ve been doing this, in addi­tion to the exper­i­ences from pros I’ve come across in magazines, in dis­cus­sion for­ums on the net and the ded­ic­ated pho­to­journ­al­ists I’ve met in the pit. You can see my work at www.thomasbisset.co.uk , and you’ll be able to con­tact me from there too if you’ve got any questions.