Whitesnake in London 2011 – what no flash?
As a break from the day job I got the opportunity to photograph live music this week – shooting rock gigs is great fun and a break from the lit portrait work. Whitesnake were performing at the Hammersmith Apollo in London on Monday night and I went to shoot for their PR company. If you have never had the opportunity to shoot a live gig you need to seek one out for the sheer fast action thrill of it all. There is no room for doubt or hesitation here – this is autopilot shooting.
The general rule for gigs of this size is “first three, no flash” – you get to shoot the first three songs but you cant use flash. Generally with a band like Whitesnake with a terrific lighting rig no flash is not a real problem however many more modern bands really go for the dark and moody look which makes the job of shooting them nigh impossible. Tonight though the lights were bright for the return of the legendary 80′s rockers.
I like to get my eye in for gigs by shooting the support act first – it can be a totally demoralizing process but it does help to ease the nerves as you get a flavour of the atmosphere and by comparison the images from the main act look terrific. The reason for this is that you will rarely get a well lit support act so you end up with one or two usable images shot at 3200 ISO but mostly they are blurred, burned out or underexposed or all three. The image below is as bright as it got but note how there is lots in the darks, a bit in the lights and really nothing in the mid tones.
So having depressed myself shooting The Union and got my eye in I was able to settle down and set up for the main act. The great thing about the Hammersmith Apollo is you are able to shoot from the pit so the Canon 28-70mm f2.8 is the lens of choice and for the long range shots the 70-200mm f2.8. The temptation is to shoot wide open at f2.8 and in fact most of the time I was, however the problem with this blanket approach is with close up shots. As the subject approaches the camera the depth of field is decreasing rapidly – this is fine until the subject then arches his body back and falls out of the focus zone. The image below demonstrates this well – the guitar is in the plane of focus but the guitarist has leaned back and out of focus.
The trick therefore is to close down to say f4 and by observing the lighting patterns and shoot in the brightest light to ensure that more of the subject was in focus – you might want to open up more ISO as a trade off to get the shutter speed up. I was shooting at ISO 1000 pretty much all the time. Also look for brief moments when the action has stopped. The guitarist here leans back but there is a point at which he can go no further and the movement is minimized – that’s a great time to shoot – he has opened his body up to the light above and his torso is static.
There is lots of mystique surrounding shooting live events – the truth is if you are competent at all three corners of the exposure triangle you will get along fine. There are plenty of blogs out there designed to intimidate and make gig photography as mysterious as possible with the sole aim of aggrandizing the writer. Ignore them and go for it – find a local band, advertise on Gumtree, see which bands are playing locally and get in touch. Most importantly DO IT and give some of your talent to others that way we all get to benefit. For a view of the images see here
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