Being a musician myself I can completely relate to what it is like to play on stage. I may have retired myself from actually performing, but I’ll never forget the feeling. So it’s no small wonder that I get such a rush out of photographing live band performances.
So how does one go about capturing those intense moments of a live performance? Well of course the old point and shoot camera isn’t going to cut it. The problem is that even though the band has brought their own lights to add some color and excitement to their performance it really isn’t sufficient for taking photos.
My goal on this particular evening was to capture the intensity of Marshall Law performing at Uphill 41. Because it is a club situation front lighting will usually be insufficient to clearly define faces so I chose to use on camera flash. I also wanted to retain the stage lighting ambience which meant I needed to turn up ISO as high as I could go. That also allowed me to get my shutter speed as high as possible to help capture the action.
I shot in manual mode to prevent the changing light from fooling the cameras metering. I was getting shutter speeds that ranged from 160 to 200 ms depending on what location I was shooting from. Not fast enough to completely stop all the action, but enough for most situations.
To keep the flash from over powering and creating that “snapshot” look I dialed it back by 3 stops. That usually worked quite well for most shots. If the face was dark it put some light on it. If it was already lit it didn’t over power what was coming from the stage lights.
All of this helped me capture the action even with the constantly changing lighting and low light. The trade off, however, would come from using such a high ISO setting. At high settings ISO noise creates grain and specks in the highlights and blotches in the shadows. To solve that problem I had to run the images through a noise reduction app during post processing. The trick here is also balance. Too much and you lose detail. Not enough and you have a low quality looking image.
Had I not used the flash I would have had to wait for moments when side lighting was working in my favor. Trying to anticipate that with an energetic performance like Marshall Law delivers is pretty much impossible. You don’t want to miss those rare opportunities when they arise.
This year Marshall Law will get the Saturday evening slot at Bridgefest playing outside of the Ramada. Of course I wouldn’t miss it. I’m sure no one else will either. This is one of the best, most talented bands I have seen in a long time. Missing them is not an option.
To see more photos of Marshall Law visit my Marshall Law Gallery.
