band photography UPDATED

[mercenary]

didn't feel like starting a new thread, so the top couple of photos are the new ones

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/blue20.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/greatness3.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/isola2.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/canvas1.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/blue17.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/greatness2.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/5591.jpg



http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/blue12.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/wide4.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/wide1.gif

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/feed10.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/jibe1.jpg

http://www-viz.tamu.edu/students/nbowden/photo/images/blue9.jpg

[krispee]

dude i too am into b&w and i love these, great work...the guy standing alone is a my fav......
nice one
any photo manip on these?

krispee

[mercenary]

thanks for the comment. no manipulations, this is all in camera; the top one however is a couple negatives combined.

[Denart]

very artistic my friend.
Especially the last 2. May i ask, why you chose B/w? They work really well here ;)

[JAUrrutia9]

These are great man! What band is this? and how did you manage a back stage pass? Great work, I'd love to give that a try...

[BadMange]

Great moody b/w shots! btw, tell the singer to stop wearing eyeliner. That's sooo 1992. ;)

[mercenary]

i shoot b/w for 2 reasons: 1) concerts are usually a nightmare with the lighting, and color film doesn't come in a fast enough speed to get the shutter speeds i want; 2) everything looks super cool in b/w. i love it when i get a photo that is 95% solid black, but the last 5% has all the info you need to understand the whole image (like the one of the guy with the keyboard).

i started out doing it just for fun, but after i started showing the photos to the bands the next time i saw them; i started to get hired to do it. Now i do it semi professionally in texas. You get the best seat in the house.

[mercenary]

hey 1992 was my favorite time in music: Pearl Jam, Nirvana, Soundgarden,STP... Plus the eyeliner makes his portraits cooler.

[BadMange]

My favorite time for music was the early 70's. Zeppelin, Stones, Who, I could go on and on...but I won't!

So, can you give us a little info on your cameras/lenses/film? What shutter speeds do you use for shooting live music in venues?

[mercenary]

i'm on board with the 70's too; but hopefully we can both agree that the 80's and late 90's never happened.

I don't like to do lots of lens changes when i'm shooting a show, because it takes too long, its cumbersome, its easy to get crap on the mirror and hard to tell if you do; so i usually stick with one lens for shows. its a tamron 28-200mm lens, and it works great for 90 percent of the stuff i have to do. My camera body is a canon elan 7 with booster pack, and most of my performance stuff is shot with kodak professional 3200 speed black and white film. because its usually so dark i shoot with the biggest aperarture openning i can, so that usually gives me a shutter speed range of 20-60. i sometimes favor the lower shutter speeds for the blur effects i can get.

[BadMange]

Hell, I was in high school in the mid-80's, so I'm with you on forgetting that whole damn decade!

Thanks for the info. I wanted to do photojournalism after taking a photo class while majoring in journalism years ago. Used my dad's old old Pentax SLR with a bunch of different lenses. I'd spend all day in the school's darkroom, going in at 8 or 9am and them asking me to leave so they can close it up at 6pm. Went thru a LOT of photo paper...

Btw, the multi exposure of the singer, really really cool! I'm amazed his body was in the same place, looks like a very energetic band.

[roger]

great shots! as an amateur music photographer (I do concert and album reviews for an spanish webzine) I know how difficult are the lightning conditions at concerts, you actually take advantage of the darkness.

I agree that the best music was done in the 70s and late 60s, but I love the early 90s, that's what I grew up with so I don't have the same emotional attachment to the older music.

[Denart]

everything looks super cool in b/w. i love it when i get a photo that is 95% solid black, but the last 5% has all the info you need to understand the whole image (like the one of the guy with the keyboard).


totally agreed :nod:
thanks for answering!

[.i.]

the first two pictures are really nice.
not the oh so usual band photography.
good.

[andres_pad]

i absolutly love that first one, thats awesome. i have to ask, was it done with a strobe, cos that stuff could be very useful for beast ref's etc. nice work mate, keep it up :teeth:

[mercenary]

i didn't use a strobe, in fact, i didn't use a flash of any kind. For this show i was lucky enough to be backstage, so there was usually plenty of available light from the stage. My camera can take 6 or 9 frames per second if i want it to, and it can also do that same number of exposures without advancing the frame. i got that shot by stainding relatively still can getting about 4-6 exposures from the same camera position. his arms are blurry because he's moving them, while most of his body and the stage remain in the same position. i'm glad you enjoyed it, thank you

[andres_pad]

yeah, thats awesome. i've been thinking and you could get the same effect from a strobre. if only i had one.....
then i could try it
anyway, keep it up, this is some awesome stuff ;)

[mercenary]

the top ones are all new...i was too lazy to start a new thread