Surprisingly, I have been in the concert photography game for a while now, I spent years behind the camera shooting some of the biggest names. Shooting for online zines, publications, venues and freelance work… I recently got the urge to shoot again. But it’s no secret that I love concerts and music but I don’t miss the long days, the late nights, tight deadlines and turn arounds. But I do. It’s something that just sparks joy. As I was gathering a few of my favorite shots, I thought I could share them here too.
Favorite Concert Shoot
Nine Inch Nails hands down was one of my favorite assignments I got to do while shooting concert photography – yet one of the craziest. So, it’s an industry standard: “First Three Songs. Secondly, No Flash.” You get your shots and you get out. Sometimes if you don’t have a tight deadline, you might be able to hang around for a set. So, Nine Inch Nails was not your typical show. Then they had 4-5 of us photographers in a hallway. We might get one song, we might get three. You might get to shoot the first song, the middle or the end. The anticipation of what songs and when we were shooting just added to the reason Nine Inch Nails is up there in my personal favorite shows that I have shot.
I have shot thousands of bands throughout 15 years of concert photography. Without a doubt, it’s hard to find some of my favorites, most live on hundreds of back-up drives and back-up drives of back-up drives.
Ah, another favorite concert photography moment of mine. Anytime a show aligns with a band I grew up listening to, you’re automatically going to have a great night. Lights were dark. The best way to ruin a great shoot, is to have dim lighting and red lights. If you guessed what I had to work with that night? All of that. But it was going to be just fine. Billy Corgan was so intense behind the mic and just truly was able to capture the energy in the room that night.
When Train put Imagine Dragons on Track
Although I could go on forever, I’ll leave you with a favorite photo of mine from my career of concert photography. It’s absolutely not my best photo, not even close. It is about the memory. It’s what is captured here. My favorite part of shooting concerts and festivals, you never know what might happen next. Maybe a special guest is about to take the stage, maybe the balloons and confetti come out and you have to be ready to capture that energy in a quick few seconds or maybe in this case you are about to see a local band become the next biggest thing.
Capturing the Next Biggest Thing
So, we’re’re going to take this back to 2009. Basically I’ve been shooting this festival all day from performances on the main stage to the side baby stage with our local bands to sponsor and vendor activations for the promoter. We get word that the headliner is cancelling – Train is moments away from when they were going to take the stage. Pat Monahan is sick and the show can’t go on. What happens when you have tens of thousands of people waiting for a headliner and you are sitting behind the promoter for the show figuring out what the next move is. Each minute seems like 1 second while the next move is being discussed.
Leading up to Bite of Las Vegas… There was a band, a real talented band but didn’t have a following yet. At the time, I was also working as a talent buyer and an assistant to a promoter. We had had this local band on several shows as an opener. We even had them “headline” some free shows around town bringing out 20-50 people on a week day night to fill up a bar.
Being Prepared for the Unknown
A crazy idea was brought up – “What if we put Imagine Dragons on the main stage?” They had already played their 4 song set at the local stage hours before for a very modest crowd but it seemed like the only logical idea. I got pulled into production a bit when this all went down, so I packed up my equipment thinking my long day of shooting was over. Wrong! I had to sprint to get my gear and managed to make it back for a quick minute of being able to capture a small local band that would eventually become one of the world’s biggest Rock Bands of our current time.
It’s not always about the perfect photo. Sometimes it about capturing a memory – but a great photo never hurts.