Concerts are an amazing place to photograph. There is high energy, tons of excitment and lots of people. With all these added up, a concert shoot can turn from a fun environment to a crazed pushing and shoving match. Throughout my experiences as a photographer in a concert situation I will walk you through a couple ways in which to succeed at shooting concerts.

Fast Glass: This is a huge factor in capturing sharp images at concerts. Most concerts are considered as a low light situation so have a lens that captures lots of light quickly is your best tool. If you are unable to grab yourself some really fast glass the next best thing is increasing your ISO levels, but that is something else entirely. When looking for glass for concert photography go for anything that is F2.8 or faster.

Don’t Use Flash: Unless you know a lot about flash photography and how to not make a concert look flat with a flash, then don’t use it. Using the ambient lighting will generally give you a more dynamic lighting, concerts have a great range of lighting and colors. Use the available light. More often then not lots of bands won’t even allow flash into the concert anyways.

Get Up Close: Now before I go on here with my next couple of tips, I do suggest that you take what I am about to say with a grain of salt because some of the things I am about to suggest may not be able to be used. Talk to the security or the band ahead of time and ask them if it is OK that you get on stage to take some pictures from a different perspective. If you can get up close to the drummer in an intense drumming sequence to get his facial expressions can be an amazing shot. Also getting up behind the main singer or any person at the front of the stage and taking a wide-angle shot of their viewpoint.

Capture the Crowd: What makes a concert? The bands interaction with the crowd. If all you ever capture is the band then you are missing out on 40% of the action that happens at a concert. While staying in the pit, turn to the crowd and make eye contact with some of the people close to you and motion that you’d like to take a picture of them. 99.999999% of the time they are so hyped up on whatever that they will be totally for it, if not even to much for it. It is also good to capture the crowd without them knowing it as well.

Pyrotechnics: If your concert is going to have pryo during it, then make sure you talk to the pyro guys. Missing out on the pyro can really make or break how well your shoot turns out. Lots of times the pyro is the highlight of the show, so if you miss it, you just missed one of the biggest highlights of the show. Ask the pyro’s to give you a sheet saying what song and when in the song the pyro’s will go off. When I was taking this shot on the right I had talked to the pyro’s ahead of time and I knew the exact time that this was going to done. The hardest part of this shot was that the pyro was only .5 sec long. Which is an extremely fast pyro to shoot. So make sure you talk to the pyrotechnicians!

Shoot in Spot Meter: Since the lighting changes so quickly and oddly in a concert, I have found that Spot Metering is the best mode to shoot in. This will help you to not get many silhouette images of the band members.

Well I hope that these quick little tips will help you in your concert photography adventures. Remember that the most important part of these shoots is to have fun just running around making sure you grab all those amazing shots, and trust me, they come very often if you are ready. If you have any questions, concerns, or comments please feel free to toss me an e-mail which you can find under the contact in the top menu bar.