music

Camera Settings for Concert Photography Beginners

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.

Concert Photography Jobs: How to Make Money by Shooting Music

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.

5 Tips for Music Photographers to Stay Safe at Festivals

Strapping thousands of dollars of camera gear to your body and navigating large crowds of intoxicated fans can present unique risks to professional music photographers. Never is that risk greater than at music festivals.

My Ever-Evolving Workflow as a Music Photographer on Tour

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.

Shooting Music Festival Musicians in a Pop-Up Photo Studio

I’ve been shooting festivals for a number of years now. In the pit, backstage, on-stage, around the site… While all of that is great (like, really really good fun) I’ve had an idea knocking about for a while now.

Canon Made a Cheesy Music Video About Itself

Canon's slogan in the US is "See Impossible," but over in Asia it's "Delighting You Always." To celebrate the 10th anniversary of that slogan last year, Canon decided to... write a song and make a cheesy music video.

I Shot with the Nikon D500. Here Are My Thoughts

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.

Watch The Muppets Cover the Song ‘Kodachrome’ by Paul Simon

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.

Musings on the Power of Interpretation

Throughout your measure of time learning photography and shooting, have you ever reached a point of realization that there is hardly a place left on the planet that you can shoot where someone else hasn’t already? Especially the most remarkable places, we find they have been packaged up, guard rails erected, and signs posted that welcome us while at the same time restrain our ability to capture a unique perspective.

Music Visualized with Light Painting Photography

How do you go about capturing music in a photograph? Photographer Stephen Orlando has an interesting answer: light painting. By attaching LED lights to the bows of violin, viola, and cello players, Orlando is able to capture a creative representation of the sounds created by musicians.

Concert Photographer, Where Did Your Integrity Go?

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.

Standing Up for the Concert Photographer… By Standing on Their Neck

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.

Jason Sheldon: My Response to Taylor Swift’s Agent

After my public response to Taylor Swift’s open letter to Apple, I didn’t quite expect the phenomenal reaction it received. I knew it was provocative. I knew it was going to be risky and could possibly harm my chances of getting access to other concerts in future, but it needed to be said -- out loud. When I thought hard about the possible consequences, and restrictions on my access to future work, I asked myself “What point is there in going to work if I can’t be paid for it, yet everyone else gets to benefit from my labor?”. The answer?

There was nothing left to lose. When you’re faced with a choice of working for free to save a millionaire having to pay a reasonable fee, or not working at all, what would you do?

Shooting on a Concert Stage in Front of 115,000 Fans

Vintage Trouble recently played their biggest gig in front of 115,000 people as the support act of AC/DCs “Rock or Bust” Tour 2015 at the Red Bull Ring in Zeltweg, Austria.

I had the once in a lifetime opportunity to join the band and work with them directly on stage. It was life changing for me and this experience once again showed me that being a concert photographer is the best job in the world!

Guitarist Andy Summers Photographed the Rise and Fall of The Police

English rock band The Police sold over 75 million records over the course of their decade-long career, making them one of the best selling music artists of all time. In addition to being the band's lead guitarist, Andy Summers was also a passionate photographer who captured behind-the-scenes photos of the band at the peak of their popularity.

Those photographs will be featured in a new documentary later this year, titled Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police.

Photographer Charles Peterson Captured the Birth of Grunge Music in Seattle

Charles Peterson is known for being one of the primary photographers on the forefront of the grunge music scene when it emerged from the Seattle underground during the 80s and 90s. He was able to capture images showing the movement from its inception through the days of bands such as Nirvana becoming huge commercial successes in the music industry.

How to Create Value for Yourself as a Music Photographer

Every year the barrier of entry for music photography seems to get lower. This isn't a bad thing, in fact I think it's awesome. But what it means is that the number of people working toward becoming music photographers is much higher. It's not an uncommon thing to be a music photographer these days, and there are thousands upon thousands of us.

Fan Gets Karate Kicked by Guitarist While Snapping an On-Stage Selfie

Here's a strange incident that's causing a stir online and in music communities: at a recent concert by the metal band Every Time I Die, a fan named Micah Barnes decided to climb onto the stage to try and snag a selfie with the lead singer. Guitarist Jordan Buckley would have none of it, and decided to put an end to the photo shoot with a swift kick that sent the smartphone flying into the air.

Ubersnap Photo Sharing Platform Lets You Combine Music and Photography in Melodic Matrimony

Whether or not you’re conscious of it when watching a movie, the sounds and soundtrack play as significant of a role as the actual imagery. Sadly, none of the standard photo sharing options allow us still photographers the luxury of framing our visual message with melody... until now.

A fairly new and interesting platform called Ubersnap is looking to change this music-less status quo.

‘Note Drawings’ Photo Series Turns City Skylines Into Musical Notation

Japanese artist Koshi Kawachi has created a interesting series of work that combines photography and music to create an experience, rather than only an aesthetic. Titled Note Drawing the series transposes the silhouettes of city skylines into musical notation. It’s with these notations Kawachi then turns these cityscapes into actual music, which then accompanies the individual pieces.

Camera Settings for Concert Photography

Choosing the right camera settings for concert photography can be a daunting task, even for experienced music photographers. Here’s a breakdown of every major camera setting that I recommend for shooting live music.

Band Responds in the Worst Way Possible After Stealing Photographer’s Work

In the beginning of April, Sydney-based photographer Rohan Anderson found himself embroiled in a nasty back-and-forth with the band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus over a photo of his they had used without credit or permission.

Often, when you let someone know they've infringed on your copyright, you get an apology and an offer to make things right. This is not what happened to Anderson.

Using ISO 100 for Concert Photography: Is it Possible?

Have you ever heard of the "4 Seconds" myth in concert photography? Well, probably not, because I made this phenomenon up as a play on words with the 4 Leaf Clover "Myth." The 4 Seconds Myth talks about the fact that there’s a maximum period of time at just a few concerts when you can in fact shoot at crisp, noiseless ISO 100.

Mhoto Automatically Generates Music for Your Pics Based on a Photo’s Content

It might not be quite a trend yet, but associating sound with photos isn't new either. Whether we're talking about interesting photographs created with sound (like Martin Klimas' paint photos) or about a camera that captures both sound and light, the idea of pairing sight and sound in photography has come up before.

Mhoto is a company with an idea along those same lines, only instead of capturing the sounds happening at the moment you take a photo, the company's tech creates music based on a photo.

Music Festival Bans Photography, Asks Attendees to do the Enforcing

There have been several stories lately of musicians banning photography and asking fans to keep their cell phones in their pockets and enjoy the show. Most recently, Prince's "purple rules" had security guards at The City Winery in NYC snatching phones in mid-air and kicking people out.

The Unsound music festival taking a larger scale (though less aggressive) approach: festival organizers have banned photography and filming festival-wide, and are asking that festival attendees be the ones to do the enforcing.