Concert shooting

I was out shooting a music concert the other evening near Twickenham that featured a couple of new bands and a performance by Jools Holland. I've not covered a lot of live music but the event was definitely a photographic challenge.

Fortunately and something that is not common, especially at larger gigs, was that I had pretty much unrestricted access and movement in the pit in front of the stage was easy enough with only around six other photographers in there, so not too crowded and the first three songs rule didn't apply.

The trickiest part was to get the exposure nailed - Ambient dropping as night fell, white, blue, orange, red, green spotlights everywhere, smoke machine chugging away, lots of unpredictable movement...you get the idea. Tricky but good to get in there and get some shots nailed.

Kit wise I was using a D3 with an 85mm 1.4 and my D2x was on a wide lens, just for the record, the D3 was shooting at 3200 ISO at f2 and gave me a shutter of an 8000th and as far as image noise is concerned the pictures were awesome, visible yes, but nowhere near as bad as the D2x for low light, high ISO noise.

So if you get the opportunity to shoot some live music then get on it and push yourself and your photography.