Common performed to a near-capacity show at the Pageant last night, rocking the house with socially conscious rhymes with the backing of both a DJ and a live drummer. The night opened with DJ Dummy, who would later support Common onstage, deftly spinning everything from Daft Punk to Jay-Z. The DJ’s time on deck proved to be the perfect start to the party and created off a buzz that persisted even through the long half-hour set change before Common’s entrance.
By the time the house lights finally went down, Common was met with an enthusiastic welcome as he strode on stage and into the spotlight. The greeting was not wasted and the performer spared no energy as he launched into his show.
The rapper immediately set into action, continuously working the entire length of the stage and pausing only at the middle and extremities to work the already hyped crowd. Without a doubt, Common’s performance provided the biggest aerobic workout I’ve had at a concert as I jogged keeping pace with the rapper. Luckily, I wasn’t the only one tracking the performer: in the balcony, two spotlights remain trained on Common throughout his performance, which lit up the stage to relatively epic levels for the venue.
In a venue in where ISO 1600 at f/2.8 and marginal shutter speeds is par for the course, last night’s abundant light meant shooting at a noiseless ISO 400 at f/3.5 and 1/250 second. With one essential ingredient in plentiful supply, the technical challenges that remained were in tracking Common and securing clear shots of the energetic performer.
The intensity of the spotlights produced strong contrast and deep shadows. Combined with a close mic position, this lighting made getting a clear shot of the performer’s face even more critical. The contrasty light and lack of more atmospheric background effects made for fairly stark visuals, but Common’s on-stage bravado needed no help filling the space beyond the spotlight.
This entry was posted on Thursday, September 20th, 2007 at 8:25 pm and is filed under Music Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Welcome to ishootshows.com, the premier site for music photography featuring daily concert coverage, portrait features, and photo advice from professional music photographer Todd Owyoung.
My name is Todd, and I love the rock show. My work has appeared in publications such as Rolling Stone, SPIN, the New York Times, Alternative Press, Metal Hammer, Entertainment Weekly, and Billboard Magazine. I'm available for worldwide travel for editorial and commercial assignments.
Design by Graph Paper Press
Subscribe to entries
Subscribe to comments
All content © 2010 by ishootshows.com
Really nicely done.
Thanks, Chris. Common’s constant motion made it a challenging performance to photograph, but coming out of the show I knew the shoot would render some compelling shots.
Inspiring work. I am just getting into concert photography and was wondering if these shots were spot metered & if so what kind of EV compensation did you use? Also are these photoshop’ed? I can’t figure out how you got these shots to look so slick
Arthur, thanks for checking out my work, glad you enjoy it. I always use manual exposure, usually with evaluative metering (Matrix) and establish exposure once the light stabilizes during the first song.
Since there were two spotlights tracking Common, exposure was very consistent throughout the first three songs, and I only changed ISO and shutter speed to get a little more motion-stopping power at times.
These particular images are just from the basic JPGs written in-camera along with the RAW. Just a little curve was added to bring out the midtones, nothing tricky, and then they were resized and saved for web. Here, the abundant light is doing most of the work, and in general, I don’t like to heavily alter my images.
Let me know if you have any questions, and good luck with concert photography.