So, despite its' general scariness and sketchiness, sometimes CraigsList pays off. Couple of weekends ago, I got a CL gig shooting the Magic 92.5 San Diego Old School Hip Hop Block Party.
Like my first time shooting anything else, I spent lots of time looking through advice sites from people who do it well and whose work I admire. In this case mostly Todd Owyoung of IshootShows.com. If you are a long time reader, you will know this isn't the first time I have mentioned being a fan of his work and his site. Anyway, I did a lot of research. Seems like most of the shows out there will find a photographer fighting for a position in a crowded pit, and only able to shoot for the first 3-4 songs of a set. I guess I got broken in easily on this one. I had full access to everything. The pit, backstage, on stage, green and dressing rooms, even spend part of the day beforehand hanging out with the group that hired me for the shoot.
That was a funny story all on its' own. I wasn't really all that sure what to expect, this being a random thing from CL after all, could go anywhere from there. Met the crew at their hotel near the venue. They were looking for a pre-sound check bite to eat, we wound up at a cigar and wine bar close by. So it's me, the Hip Hop Crew, and a biker gang. (not pictured- but seriously, this crew were pretty much the extras from Sons of Anarchy, except the real thing) Anyway, at one point, I headed for the bathroom. Turns out there was only one unisex bathroom- not only was it occupied by one of the biker girls, but she had forgotten to lock the door. Ooops. Luckily she had a good sense of humor about it and the gang did not kill me. Crisis averted, it was back to the hotel to meet up with more of the crew and get ready for sound check.
So here I am shooting pics listening to Melle Mel wax philosophical on the current state of hip hop, from Run DMC to $.50. Then it was off to the sound check to get a few shots, survey the layout and get ready for the main event.
Quick dinner in the production room then it was game on. Turns out that not only did I have unlimited access and freedom to move around, I was also one of only four pros shooting the concert. There were two other still shooters and one videographer rolling in the pit. There were plenty of people with phones taking pics of course, and a lot of people running around with DSLRs using their popup flashes and kit lenses, but no real crowd of jostling lenses in the pit at all.That meant I got to have a lot of fun and play. I shot with all three of my big guns, shot at everything from 14mm to 200mm. At the distance I was at, I found myself defaulting to the 24-70mm for most of the show. Each lens had its' uses.
Overall, the closer in shots were the ones I liked the best. For these the 70-200 was the solution.
But often there was something I wanted to open up a bit for, and I am not good enough yet at following the action to stay completely in that close. That meant that for most of the show my go to choice was the 24-70mm. Got most of my favorite shots with that one.
I also brought the 14-24 out to play a little bit. I didn't really like shooting with it from the pit, because I was so low that the perspective got skewed and all the artists looked like they had enormous feet, miles of legs, and little heads. Interesting perspective maybe, but not exactly flattering shots. None that made the cut. Where the wide angle really was fun was shooting from backstage. I found that I really liked shooting from the stage perspective, lots of shots like these:
Even shooting wide open at 2.8, the 14-24 really gave good depth of field and kept the audience from fading into a sea of bokeh.
Since this is a technical-ish sort of blog, I guess I should mention how I shot these. I did play around with a lot of variety, but in general I was shooting shutter priority, 1/200-1/500 second, auto ISO capped at 12,800. Spot metering, cloudy white balance, -1/3EV exposure compensation. (seems to be my default on excalibur, if you didn't catch that from other posts). The only issues I had with these settings were when there was a combo of a dark skinned performer in a white suit, for those I had to switch over to center weight metering or switch to full manual, take a quick reading on the face and another on the costume, and split the difference. As incredible as the D4 is, even its' meter had trouble with shots like this one...
You can see how close the suit is to being blown out, I still had to do a lot of highlight recovery in post to get the detail back. The camera did have the dynamic range, but it took work. Really had to work to dial in a setup that let me recover both the shadow and the highlight details.
The one thing I found that even excalibur couldn't save, no matter how hard I tried, was the hat shadow. Lots of performers, especially in the hip hop world, like to wear hats. Baseball caps, fedoras, cop hats, pimp hats, etc.
This really doesn't work so well when most of the lighting is coming down form above and the performers are mostly looking down at the audience. This leads to deep, unrecoverable shadows around the eyes of the performers unless they happen to be looking up when you hit the shutter. Took me a bit to learn to time my shots so you could actually see the eyes. Will have to see if I can find a way to deal with that in the future.
Overall, this was a great experience, I had a blast shooting. I learned a lot and got to play with all the toys. In parting, I will leave you with this advice, just because the focus is on stage, don't forget there there are lots of good stories happening in the audience as well, always look around for your shots.
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