The Regsy’s guide to Festival Photography
Well I can’t say that I am entirely self taught, I had done
an evening class aimed at serious amateur photographers and I have read a lot
of books on the topic, none of which agree on much! LOL
But most of the improvements that you can see (at least I
hope you can) in my pictures comes down to 2 things, practise and better kit.
If you head into the gallery and look at pic’s taken before
2009, these were mostly done on point and shoot or compact zoom cameras, there
are some good pic’s in there and some average ones. To be fair there are a few that I should have
binned rather than putting up. But that
was 3 years ago and boy have I had a lot of practise since then!
First off, your camera doesn’t take good pictures you do!
The camera is only there to take the image, that’s it, it
doesn’t decide what to take the picture of, you do, you decide when where and
what to shoot and in some cases how to shoot it, even with the camera set to
full ‘Auto’ all it is responsible for is making sure the picture is in focus
and bright enough to see. So there you
go, you don’t need £3,000 of camera with £2,000 of lens to take a good
picture. However you will struggle with
the camera on your mobile phone or a £20 cheapie from a bargain bin.
If you gave David Bailey a pocket digital camera and gave me
the latest all singing all dancing Nikon
I can tell you he would still get better pictures than me.
So what do I shoot?
Whatever I want is the simple answer, I am always looking to
see if there is an element in the crowd or on stage that captures either that
moment or the feel of the festival. For
example there is a pic of a kid being dragged through the mud at Solfest a
couple of years ago, now the pic is blurry and a little dark but it captures
that Solfest feeling well, therefore its a good picture, well it is to me, some
would disagree but....
What makes a good picture?
Only you can decide, its that simple, like art or music
there are no hard and fast rules that say a picture must look like this or
this, when you look at a picture does it grab you? Or do you just click next? That’s
it, there are many books that tell you how to compose a photo, use the rule of
thirds (Google it if you must) and look for leading lines but if we all followed
these ideas we’d all have photos that look identical, so by all means take a
look at the guides familiarise yourself with the ideas, then...... go out and
do your own thing.
Framing that shot
This can be tricky, LOL, if you are taking shots of a band
or band member get as close as you can, fill as much of the frame as possible
without cutting any important bits off (unless you want to) but vary these
tight shots with some wider that capture more of the band, or all of the band
so you have a range of images, if I just took pics of each band member one at a time then you’d end up with a bunch
of fairly boring portraits of individuals.
Also remember to keep your eyes peeled for any action happening on stage
(or off) a band like AWOL that seem to be constantly moving, jumping or posing
are great to take pictures of as there is always something going on, but it
doesn’t have to be all action, Colt 45 aren’t the most frenzied band on stage,
but Harper always looks like he is singing at full chat which makes for
interesting photos. But if its a huge
gig don’t forget to try and get some pics that show the scale of the crowd or
venue even the lighting can be impressive from the back of the crowd.
Zooming
Zoom lenses can make your life easier and are essential for
things like wildlife or sports photography, but they can also be a
hindrance. If, like me, you can’t afford
to spend thousands of pounds and a zoom lens then what happens is the more you
zoom the less light the lens can let in which results in either a darker image
or the camera compensating by opening the shutter for longer which can result
in blurry images. The more you zoom the
more chance you have of getting blur from camera shake as well, so although I use
a 28-300mm zoom there are some tips. First off get as close as you can so you are
zooming as little as possible letting more light in, keeping the shutter speed
high (for less motion blur) and camera shake won’t affect you as much. I have been stood stage front with head in
bass bin to get a good shot. If you are
as close as you can be and have to zoom make sure you are
standing/sitting/leaning in as solid a position as possible if you can lean on
something solid to help you keep steady, if you can sit with your elbows on
your knees that works quite well but you need to be able to hold that position
without wobbling. If your camera has a
viewfinder that you can press your eye against use it, you will be holding the
camera much more steadily than holding at arm’s length with the back display. If you are using a long zoom 250mm or more
then a tripod or monopod could be a good idea.
I don’t use one because it’s just one more piece of kit to drag around
all day.
Familiarity
Get to know your camera, learn how to change settings
quickly, practise with it use it and get as comfortable with it as you
can, there is nothing worse than
discovering you need to change something (say turn the flash on) and while you
are looking for the option that lets you the band have formed a human pyramid
on stage and by the time you are sorted you’ve missed it. I have 2 cameras a Fuji Finepix S2 pro and a
Nikon D2x, both of these cameras look intimidating there are lots of buttons
and dials on them and they look complicated, but to me it makes more sense I
can change a lot of things very quickly without ever having to press the menu
button, scroll to page 3 of the options etc etc etc. Horses for courses though, I like to work
with them, you might not but the more aware you are of how your camera works
the better you will be able to work your camera.
Should I specialise or shoot lots of things?
OK this is easy, I love shooting gigs and festivals, apart
from the fact that I enjoy the music and atmosphere I appear to be reasonably
good at it and people appreciate my efforts, well judging by the amount of new
profile pictures when I upload to Facebook. If you have looked through the gallery you
will see I have wildlife pictures, landscapes and really everything bar
weddings. If you are stuck in a rut,
have lost your spark or are just losing interest go out and take pictures of
something different, try something outside of your normal comfort zone. I recently was asked to take some photos at a
friend’s daughters Prom, before she left the house to go partying, It is very
safe to say that I had never contemplated anything like this before and headed
off with a little trepidation, after a little while settling in everything went
well and the finished results are better than I could have hoped for, that puts
a zing in your step for a while. So take
your camera and go out and play, see what comes along and try different things.
Equipment
OK this is where it gets difficult, you want a camera and
you want to take nice photos, you might even want to try and make money out of
it so what do you need? Well first off
you need to decide what your interest is as a photographer, as a holiday snaps
shooter then a decent shirt pocket sized point and shoot can easily be yours
for under £100, easy job done. But the
choices are limitless, from the camera on your phone, to one for £20 out of a
supermarket or £5000 for the latest Nikon or Canon ‘Pro’ camera, more if you
desire you could spend a huge amount on a Hassleblad with 50 megapixel, but
unless you are a fashion photographer being paid an awful lot for your work is
it worth it?
So there you go no help at all am I LOL, as I said further
up the camera doesn’t create great works of art, you do. So if you can make your mind up what size of
camera you are after, have a budget and have read all the stuff on the web
about cameras you may like you can go ahead and buy one, right? You can but I wouldn’t, find someone with one
first or find one in a shop, you really must try it out, see how it feels, can
you hold it comfortably? Is it too
big/small in your hands? Is it too
heavy? No amount of research will tell you any of that; you have to try it for
yourself. I have had a camera that I
sold on because I didn’t like it, nothing wrong with the images or quality or
anything like that it was just a bit small (Nikon D40) however the Nikon D2x is
a big heavy lump of a camera that I love to use just because it feels so right
when I lift it up, solid, comfy, nice heft to it for me, other people wouldn’t
be able to lift it.
If you want kit you can’t afford new then look for used
stuff, all of my cameras, lenses and flash have been bought used, there is now
way that I could go out and buy a new ‘Pro’ camera that would set me back
£3000+ but one that is the last
generation Pro camera a few years old that isn’t brand spankly new well when
you can get one for £200 it would be rude not to really, just make sure you
read the description carefully if it’s on the internet and again if you can try
one before you shell out.
Technical Stuff
When you are taking pic’s on bands on stage you may need to
do it without flash (depending on the band/venue) so it can be tricky, if you
leave your camera on Auto it will never think that there is enough light to get
the pic’s you want, so you might have to go manual (eek!) better yet put your
ISO setting up as high as you can before the noise is terrible (try a few
first) the D2x and S2 pro get bad at ISO 800, so I’ll set to that switch the
camera to ‘S’ for shutter priority and set the shutter speed to at least 1/125thsecond
try a few shots and take it from there, if you are shooting a very stationary
act then you may be able to drop your shutter to 1/60th but you
could get motion blur at that, some bands are constantly running about, moving
jumping etc and if you want to catch them you may need to go even higher on the
shutter, but check your shots every so often to see what you are getting, if
they are a little dark you can probably pull them back in Lightroom or
Photoshop (other editing packages are available) but if they are too dark then
all you will get is noise. Stage lighting is a pain in the backside, some smaller gigs you don't have a lot and getting pictures with no flash can be almost impossible, so you might have to use it, bigger gigs and bands might tell you that you can't use flash while stage front, to be fair at events where this is likely to happen chances are there will be a massive light rig, now your camera might not agree that it has enough light, so if you can change it to spot metering, this will only use the light level in the middle of your lens giving you a better idea of how bright what you are pointing at really is. On a second note, even if your camera is saying its too dark shoot a couple anyway, see what you get, neither of mine like stage type lighting and I have got good shots when the camera says no.
Another tip is to watch the lights, they usually move in a pattern, so the singer might be more brightly lit every 10 seconds as the lights change, making it easier for you to get a better image, there is another solution, most of the sound and lighting people we've met are susceptible to beer, they might give you a few seconds of brighter (or whiter) light if you ask them nicely, or buy them a pint 
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