How to be a concert photographer

Being a concert photographer is very exciting, and chances are there are thousands of people who would love the opportunity to photograph their favourite bands, well now is your chance to because with this article I am going to show you exactly how to do it.

Getting Started

The best way to get started is to go along to some smaller gigs and take your DSLR camera, you can then play around with the settings on your camera and take some photos to get some experience.  With the smaller gigs you won’t need any accreditation but I would recommend getting there early so that you can be towards the front of the concert.

The main problem you will face when starting out is the quality of the lighting, in fact in some clubs you will feel like you’re shooting in the dark, you may think that you can simply turn on your flash however this is bad practice because when you start to shoot at better locations you won’t be able to use flash.    To let more light into your photo you will want a fast lens, one I would recommend is the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Camera Lens, I love this lens it’s affordable and does the job well.

What settings to use

Obviously this will change club to club because of the different quality in lighting, however when your first starting off chances are you will be shooting in some poor lighting conditions.  So I would recommend using the following settings:

Camera Mode: Aperture Priority

Aperture: F1.8 (or lowest available)

ISO: 1600

White Balance: Auto

Metering Mode: Spot Metering

Shutter Mode: Single or Multi shot (I prefer single)

The above numbers or settings are just guides, you can change them as you see fit, however they are a good starting point, and I would recommend also shooting on RAW mode so that if you mess up your exposure you may be able to fix it in post processing with adobe Lightroom.

How to get the famous “press pass”

I don’t know if press pass is the correct term used any more, I think it’s called a media pass these days, but whatever you call it we both know you want one. Once you have had some experience in shooting some concerts or gigs you should have some good pictures, now you can either use these pictures to try and get a magazine to allow you to work for them or you could build your own website and throw your pictures on there, I prefer the 2^nd option.

Once you have done one of the above it is simply a question of getting in touch with either the venue or the bands press agent.  I’ve often found that you can phone the venue and ask for the number of the press agent.

The last couple of tips I would give you are to make sure your camera is fully charged, you have enough storage, take as many pictures as possible and most importantly have fun.