As people who work the day-to-day of concert, industrial, theatrical and television, we sometimes forget we to need to take photos to help capture our work. It is important to show our work in the best way possible. Detailing a design in words can only go so far; visuals help to explain what we accomplished. These days, websites and social media are great places for potential employers to see and learn about us. Our next gig might be a click away. We don’t always have the luxury to have someone capture our work. But we can learn to improve our own photography skills.
Advice from a Pro
Brittney Bush Bollay, a music photographer, spends much of her time in the venues of Seattle honing her skills. She knows a thing or two about capturing the look and feel of a performance. After moving back to the states from Egypt, she spent her nights escaping her day job as a photography intern at the Woodland Park Zoo taking photos of Seattle’s diverse live music scene.
“The hardest thing about starting out in photography was figuring out how to coax the best possible photos out my equipment,” she says. “I had to shoot in manual exposure and learn how to find and shoot with any available light source.”
Music photographers try to capture the performances as they happen. Brittney notes that the best photographs during live shows are those moments that are a bit out of your control. The moments happen spontaneously after much practice and persistence with learning the gear and learning how people perform.
Equipment-wise, these days, digital single lens reflex (DSLR) cameras are the weapons of choice, but they have some limitations that need to dealt with. Moving beyond the default and pre-program settings of your camera are the only way to build a creative series of shots. Shooting in manual exposure and learning how exploit the scene and the lighting will make you a much better photographer.
Performance Lighting
“Music photographers spend a lot of time bitching about artists who stand too still or move too much, and about lighting guys who use too much red light,” she says, adding, “I’m sure the musicians bitch about photographers who won’t get out of their faces, and the lighting guys think we’re entitled and demanding. But,” she continues, “red light really is hard to work with,” producing photos that are “flat” and “boring” and a bit of a cliché. “The most beautiful photos come from white or yellow light.”
Capturing the performances has always been a challenge. Jim Hagans, a 20-year veteran photographer for The Nashville Network and Country Music Television, has always wished for more light on stage. There is never enough when low ASA/ISO were required for laser-sharp images. Monopods helped him produce stunning images for print. Although cameras have changed a lot in the last few years — you can now sneak up the ISO rating and sacrifice a bit of grain — the basics remain the same. Good composition, good mechanics of photography, good timing — and a little luck.
Composition
Learning to take a great photo is as simple as observing. What photos have “spoken to you” when you saw one? How was it composed or framed? Did the photographer divide the frame force the viewer to look at the picture differently? When starting out, there is a tendency for many to always place the subject in the center of the frame. Also, did you ever notice the headroom of a bad photograph? Be sure to use the top of the frame to set your shot, not the bottom. Professional photographers divide up the frame; this is often called using the “rule of thirds.” This is when a photo is divided into three equal parts, both horizontally and vertically, making nine equal parts. Instead of simply centering the object in the frame, try positioning it a little off-center — at the intersections of the lines marking the “thirds” — to add more visual interest.
A great way to start playing with composition is by taking static shots of the gig. Start by getting a tripod, monopod or something else to steady your shot and place it so that the camera can be positioned to frame something with the most impact. Try different lenses, too. Using a wide angle lens and getting closer will make your rig look huge; using a telephoto lens and backing up a bit can compress the image and exaggerate depth. Setting up off-center and shooting from a house left or right angle can exaggerate the lines and make elements in your shots look big and bold. Tilt up and down — experiment to find what works for you.
Exposure
In the days when we shot only negative film, we were always told to expose for the shadows and print for the highlights. Now, with digital cameras, we invert this idea. Many press photographers now slightly underexpose to maintain any detail in the brighter areas of the image and let the shadows fall where they may. These shadows can then be minimized later using photo software.
If you think about this, it make sense. This was how we used to shoot slide film. If the image was overexposed, we have nothing to print; that detail is gone. Many cameras use graphs or histograms to help you see what has been recorded. Of course, if you really want to make sure you’ve nailed the exposure, you can always bracket the shot. Take three photos — one under, one at normal and one over. You can also use Photoshop or a workflow software like Lightroom or Aperture to tweak the images — or even combine all the shots using HDR (High Dynamic Range) software to build your shot from all three.
Workflow
Many professionals these days only shoot in RAW files. That is when you take a photograph and the camera spills all the data to the memory card, letting you decide later what to do with it all. If you record JPEG, the camera will make decisions for you on sharpness, color and compression making a smaller file almost a sixth the size on your memory card. If you decide to record your photos to RAW, you will need software to deal with all this data and convert it to something you can use. These files are huge. Programs like Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, Apple Aperture, Camera Bit’s Photo mechanic or free programs/services like Google’s Picasa will allow you to edit and manage the files once you decide what you’d like to do with them.
In recent years, many pros have gotten to the point where they don’t print to paper anymore. Files are emailed, transferred or burned to DVD. Brittney’s clients usually ask her for two resolutions: one full size and the other web-optimized, typically 1280px. Sets are delivered separately so the smaller photos can be viewed for reference and the larger ones saved for later.
Learning the tools, playing with angles and different ideas of framing, and recording and managing the image for later will get you better quality images. Brittney and Jim both say that, beyond the technical aspects of photography, the best image is the one that says “I wish I was there.”
