May 8, 2009 – Winding down the North American leg of their Dark Passion Play 2009 tour, Finland’s symphonic power metal royalty, Nightwish, laid into an epic set of crushing riffs, fluttering keys, and soaring vocals. 
Photographer’s Notes:
This was a fun set to photograph, in part because the band themselves seemed to be having such a good time on stage. In particular, guitarist Emppu Vuorinen seemed to have a non-stop grin plastered over his face while soloing with his purple ESP.
One of the main challenges for this set was a massive wall of speaker monitors positioned at the front of the stage, which restricted shooting angles and added another 18-inches or so to the four-foot stage. The wedges also limited the usability of wide angles, so the Nikon 14-24mm didn’t see as much action for this concert as I would have hoped. Luckily, Emppu and bassist Marco Hietala took ample opportunity to get a leg up on the monitors during their solos, which afforded some nice photo ops.
Overall, lighting was fairly sparse for this set, with much of the work being done by the house lights. The tour’s own lighting came into play more as accent bursts from the LED par lights from the back of the stage.
I photographed this concert with the Nikon D3 and Nikon 24-70mm for the majority of the allotted time, with occasional switches to the Nikon 14-24mm.
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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.
Another set of great images Todd.
Hi Ian, thanks for the feedback.
Not your usual standard in my opinion.
Felt quite lacking in some sense.
The winner photo for me will be the 6th photo from the main set (keyboards with backlighting).
Hey Shiro, thanks for your comment, I appreciate the criticism. The set with Tuomas was one of the more serendipitous moments when the backlighting flared up – most of the time the stage lights were much more subdued.
And what settings did you favor? Lighting at concerts is frequently an issue. Like to hear how you approach it.
Hey Annie,
I was shooting around ISO 1600 on the D3. I was shooting around f/2.8 and somewhere around 1/50-1/125 or so. You can read about how I approach exposure in these two articles:
Concert Photography How to: Exposure pt. 1
Concert Photography How to: Exposure pt. 2
With flash photography, the approach is basically to set your camera exposure for the ambient light while setting your flash exposure for the subject. Hope this helps.
In answer to your question.How important is the camera? well the camera is just the tool ,without the photographers skill and imagination its nothing but metal and plastic.