This article is a little guide on how I have had luck shooting photos at concerts. This is by no means the only way to do it, nor can I say that it will be the best way to do it for everyone. All I can say is that I recommend bringing a 35mm camera into some concerts. It really is a fun way to document your night!
Taylor Swift's Eras tour has been an absolute smash hit, with attendance at each show averaging more than 72,000 fans. With nearly 70 shows on the docket throughout North America and ticket prices averaging nearly $500, ticket sales alone could eclipse $2 billion per CNN. Unsurprisingly, many fans want to take high-quality photos and videos at the shows.
A photographer has created a stunning four-gigapixel, super-high-resolution photo of a vibrant Rammstein concert featuring 55,000 revelers and three Where's Waldos.
One of the most exciting things to photograph is a live concert. Rock concerts in particular have an air of electricity about them that you can feel. When you are hired to photograph one you automatically feel like you are a part of that excitement.
Singer Steve Lacy smashed a fan's camera and walked off stage after the fan threw the camera at him while performing live in New Orleans on Monday night.
These candid photos of Depeche Mode were taken by the band themselves who sent them to a fan after he had attended one of their gigs and threw a roll of film on stage.
Rolling Stone's first staff photographer Baron Wolman has passed away at the age of 83. Though known primarily for his work with the rock magazine where he captured some of Rock's most iconic imagery, Wolman's photography career was vast and varied.
When the Gran Teatre del Liceu opera house in Barcelona reopened on June 22nd after the months of coronavirus lockdowns, its first concert was rather unusual. Instead of humans filling the seats, the live performance was attended by 2,292 plants.
In Summer of 2019, while working with Elbow in Manchester, concert photographer Peter Neill had an idea. He decided to try and stitch an epic panorama... with a twist. Instead of using a wide-angle, he would use an 85mm f/1.4 and capture a pano of the stage and the crowd, but with a shallow depth of field and bokeh.
Dear Live Nation,
This is an open letter to your company regarding the increasingly poor treatment of media and credentialed photographers.
Aerosmith lead singer Steven Tyler is drawing mixed reactions today after posting a video to his Facebook and Instagram accounts in which he chastises a fan for recording him during a show, telling the fan to "turn it off" and "F***ing watch the show!".
I’m an experienced concert photographer. From the largest stadiums to the smallest, dirtiest night clubs, I’ve photographed thousands of bands and seen it all. I’m damned confident in my ability to anticipate the shot and be in the right place at the right time. Or, at least I was until last Saturday night.
I am writing this concert photography guide in response to several ‘How to’ guides I have seen online that don’t quite hit the mark on how to take great live concert photographs. Most of the articles focus too much on the obvious, like concerts are dark and avoid things in your way (like mic stands and such). Personally, I think it is a bit patronizing to suggest that you are letting the photographer in on the ‘professional secrets’ if it is written by a non-professional music photographer, so this is my guide.
The punk rock band FIDLAR was performing in Berkeley earlier this week when a fan jumped onstage and attempted to take a selfie with frontman Zac Carper. Carper would have none of it, and he proceeded to slap the phone out of the woman's hand.
Singer Rob Halford of the famous English heavy metal band Judas Priest is making headlines after he was caught on camera kicking a phone out of a fan's hands in the middle of a song.
Bob Dylan is known for being a man of few (speaking) words on stage, but he took to the mic during a show this week to call out fans for breaking his well-known "no photos" rule.
American music star Ariana Grande has sparked an outcry from photographers and media organizations with her new concert tour agreement. Reportedly a response to "greedy photographers" taking advantage of her in the past, the new contract requires that photographers hand over full copyright to their photos.
Film is very rarely used in music photography anymore. The reason for this is primarily because of social media and instant news. There’s no time to go home and start pouring chemicals onto film to develop it or wait until the morning until a lab opens to do it for you.
What would it look like if I made a timelapse out of every single picture that I captured during a concert? I had occasionally been toying with this idea since I saw a wedding timelapse by photographer Kevin Mullins a while ago.
Julian David Stone refers to himself as an "outlaw rock and roll photographer." His impressive archive contains over 10,000 concert photos of some of the biggest names in the history of rock-and-roll, but he shot all of them by sneaking his camera into shows.
Singer and guitarist Jack White, the founder of The White Stripes, has banned fan photos at upcoming live concerts. It's a policy that will be strictly enforced: concert-goers will have their smartphones locked away while they're at the show.
Queens of the Stone Age musician Josh Homme is at the center of controversy this week after he was caught on camera kicking a female photographer in the face in the middle of a concert in Los Angeles this weekend.
I recently shot a series of double exposure photos of the band I Don’t Know How But They Found Me at The Knitting Factory, and they've received a great response. So, I thought it would be worth explaining how I took them!
A popular music festival is offering a new "fan experience" that's raising eyebrows among some photographers: pay $500, and you'll have the opportunity to shoot concert photos for the festival from the photo pit.
This guide is intended for concert photography beginners. If you have a DSLR camera and are interested in how to control your camera settings to take great photos at concerts, this guide is for you. If you're an experienced photographer who just hasn't shot shows before, there may be some helpful info in here along with plenty of stuff you know already.
Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Josh Klinghoffer hates when people at the band's shows spend the whole time staring through their screen—shooting the performance on a 4-inch box instead of experiencing it for themselves. So last year, during a show in Turin, Italy, he turned the tables.
Musician Ryan Adams got into another very public scuffle with a photographer this week. Midway through his set at the 2017 Gasparilla Music Festival, Adams, who suffers from Meniere’s disease, called out photographer Joe Sale for using flash photography and potentially putting the musician's health at risk.
There are a lot more music photographers than there are music photography jobs — that’s just how it is in this corner of the industry. It's a port of entry for many hobbyist photographers, and the result is saturation of the market. A lot of budding photographers are willing to work for free, making the gigs that are out there even tougher to get.
I've been touring with bands for about 4 years now, and my workflow has changed nearly every tour, allowing me to spend less and less time editing, and ending up with an organized, easy to manage body of work after each tour is done. I think this is crucial to not only the quality of work you can put out on tour, but also your sanity.
The battle between musicians and their smartphone-wielding concert goers is a constant tussle. Smartphone-free zones are difficult to enforce, and even if you don't want to watch the show through a screen you might lack the self-control to leave your smartphone alone. Enter the Yondr pouch.
Many of of us have done it: rather than enjoying that amazing concert or live event you're at, you pull out your camera and end up watching most of it through the LCD screen. Well, pop star Adele ain't havin' it, especially if you go so far as to set up a tripod.
It’s been a big week for Nikon announcements at CES 2016 in Las Vegas, with launches of the Nikon D500, Nikon D5, and new SB-5000 Speedlight. The new D500 is a camera that many people have been waiting a long time for — a successor to the Nikon D300/D300s and a true flagship for the Nikon DX line of APS-C cameras. The D500 packs in many of the same new, next-generation features as the Nikon D5 that was also just announced, including a brilliant new autofocus system, EXPEED 5 image processing, and a whole lot more.
With the Nikon D500 now official, I am extremely excited to say I had the privilege of shooting with the D500 to create images for its launch. I’ve had to keep this project under wraps since August, but now that the camera has been announced, I can finally share my thoughts on this new DX flagship DSLR.
Kodak's iconic Kodachrome film was retired from service back in 2009, but back in 1973, American singer Paul Simon immortalized the classic film stock in his hit song "Kodachrome."
The new ABC series The Muppets recently posted this short music video in which Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem -- the rock band of The Muppets -- perform "Kodachrome" live in concert.
So you're getting ready to photograph your first concert? That's awesome. Chances are, it’s a less-than-perfect venue -- that's usually how it works out. It’s kind of like getting your first car. You don’t start out with a Jaguar. You get a baby blue minivan with doors that don’t shut in the winter…
Restrictive concert photography contracts have been a big story in the photo world over the past several months. Taylor Swift, the Foo Fighters, Dweezil Zappa, and Janet Jackson have all made headlines for their extremely strict -- and often rights-grabbing -- contracts that photographers and reporters must sign before covering a concert.
Now a number of the media industry's biggest associations and organizations have published an open letter to performers on behalf of thousands of photographers and journalists in the United States.
Earlier this year, music photographer Adam Elmakias shot one of the biggest shows he has ever covered: a performance by the American pop punk band All Time Low at London's O2 Arena, which has the second-highest seating capacity of any indoor venue in the UK.
To share what shooting a show of this magnitude with stage access is like, Elmakias attached a GoPro to his DSLR and had the camera rolling while he did his thing. The 1.5-hour behind-the-scenes video above lets you step into Elmakias' shoes, and the photographer's narration helps fill in what's going on.
Filmmaker Woody Roseland made this short 2-minute tongue-in-cheek video titled “5 Photohacks to …
Guitarist Dweezil Zappa, the son of Frank Zappa, recently took to Facebook to respond to critics of his strict concert photography contact.
Over the last couple of weeks, the matter of photo contracts has once again been debated. First came Jason Sheldon’s blog post, calling Taylor Swift out on her hypocrisy when attacking Apple for demanding musicians give away their music for free while doing the exact same thing to concert photographers in her photo contracts. If you’re reading this, you’re probably well aware of that whole ordeal, so there’s no need to get into it further other than to say that I fully support Sheldon’s views.
Last week, the Washington City Paper made a stand against what it considered an unfair concert photography contract presented by the Foo Fighters with an article entitled "Why We’re Not Photographing The Foo Fighters." Concert photographers everywhere stood up and slow clapped for the headline, the main idea of the article, and the stand it took on photographers rights.
In the last paragraph of the article however, the City Paper did something even worse to photographers than the Foo Fighters ever could have: they called on the fans to submit photos of the show, and they offered to pay for them.