Returning after a three-year absence, alt-rockers Switchfoot stormed the Pageant to deliver a passionate performance to a crowd of a thousand strong. Many of the fans rocking the barricade had braved freezing weather for their prime real estate – for this music photographer, any band with such dedicated fans is one worth photographing.
On top of that, any show that starts with the lead singer planted in the audience and giving the people some love is a great bonus.
Photography Notes:
This show was an interesting challenge and the three-song limit for this performance simply flew by.
Lighting was a mix of LED arrays at the sides of the stage, magenta uplighting on frontman Jon Foreman, and spastic strobes. By the third song, all this gave way to some relatively epic flareups of warm backlighting, a welcome punctuation to the dimmer treatments of the previous songs. All in all, frontlighting was in very short supply for this concert.
For me, the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 ruled this set and stayed glued to the Nikon D3, while the 14-24mm f/2.8 and 70-200mm f/2.8 took turns on the D700. I mostly shot wide open with my zooms between ISO 2000 and ISO 3200.
