LondonPhotos Nlog

A few people have asked me what it’s like to shoot an event like the MOBO Awards, or concert photography in general, so thought I’d post up a blog entry with some thoughts on gear and settings.

I was fortunate to be part of the in-house photography team for the MOBO Awards on 3rd November 2012, at the Echo Arena in Liverpool. We traveled up from London in the morning. Heading straight to the venue, to meet the MOBO editorial team in the Production Room and run through our briefs.

Everyone has a specific job on the day, so the broadest coverage is captured. People were assigned from red carpet duties, dressing room, arena floor, talent retreat, media runs, VIP areas, and if you were lucky the VIP Aftershow Party!

My job was to work the VIP reception areas before the show, and the arena floor during the main event. The brief was to capture iconic images of performances, award presentations, reactions to nominations and the excitement of the evening.

Here’s what was in my bag: Bodies: Nikon D4 & D3s. Lenses: Nikon 70-200 f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8, 50mm f/1.4, and 85mm f/1.4 although I never ended up using the 85.

At concerts and events like this – great shots pass by in a heartbeat, so it helps to have quality, fast glass that focuses quickly and reliably. There’s nothing more annoying than seeing a great shot and missing focus. (Still happens sometimes no matter what you’re using). The light was variable as you’d expect at a show, but I guess the benefit of televised events is that the lighting team are top notch, so you can expect the performers to be well lit for broadcast. Unlike mono colour, backlit only gigs in small, dingy clubs where there’s often little or no light on the artists’ faces. Still – a camera with good low light / high ISO performance is a must have and both my Nikons excel in this.

Also had a couple of Nikon Speedlights, an SB-910 and SB-900 and a flash bracket from Really Right Stuff. (I’ll come back to that). I use a Black Rapid DR-1, double strap to carry both bodies around. I find this comfortable to wear all day and it doesn’t impede access to your cameras, or swapping bodies in an instant.

No flash allowed for the performances of course, so I only used the speedlights for table shots with guests and celebs before the main gig started, and for shooting guests in the VIP reception area.
We got to see the full dress rehearsal in the afternoon. This was useful knowledge for what the performances were to be like later and gave me a chance to try out different camera settings and angles.

f/3.2, ISO 500, 1/500s

This is a picture of Angel’s performance of Wonderful at the dress rehearsal. There was lots of pyro in this one, with flames licking around one side of the stage runway. I wanted to capture saturation and colour in the fire and if I’d exposed correctly for Angel’s face, the fire would have been all but blown out to white, with no detail, so I decided to underexpose until I got a nice balance, knowing that I could push up the shadows later in post.

I shoot manual 99% of the time at gigs, as the ever changing lighting can fool your meter easily. I find it best to take control, get a ballpark exposure for artists’ faces and work from there.
Here’s how I work. I use a minimum shutter speed of 1/125s generally, so that I can freeze the action but often I’ll use higher if I can, or depending on the speed of movement in shot. I’ll either shoot wide open on the zooms @f/2.8 and also @f/4, for a little extra margin on focus/depth of field. From there, I’ll set my ISO to whatever value gives me a good exposure. This could be 1600, 2000, 4000. Whatever suits depending on the light.
You need to know your camera operation very well, especially in the dark, by feel because you’ll be riding ISO, shutter speed and to a lesser extent aperture all night as situations warrant.

f/2.8, ISO 3200, 1/250s

f/2.8, ISO 1600, 1/400s

For this one of Labrinth (Tim McKenzie), jumping off the B stage on his way to perform Earthquake, my settings were ISO-3200, 1/250s @ f/2.8. Catching him at the top of his jump meant he wasn’t really moving at all – so it’s nicely frozen the action. And, of course, there’s a healthy dose of luck involved.

The second shot of Labrinth illustrates a compositional point. With singers & guitarists – it’s not good to get shot after shot with the mic in front of their face. Mic-munching I call this! Try and look for an opportunity when they move sideways or pull back to sing a loud line. This can be harder with rappers because of the way they typically hold the mic.

Don’t always take centrally composed head-shots – they get boring fast. Composition should become second nature, so that your mind can think about all the other things you need to consider, like have I missed dinner and I wonder if I’ll find a Nandos open later.

f/4, ISO 2000, 1/200s

f/4, ISO 2500, 1/250s

For award receiving images, I try to get shots with some emotion on the artist’s face and the MOBO Award visible, preferably in an orientation so that it could be read/seen easily. Branding is needed in the shots, even if it’s just the MOBO ‘M’ in the background so that images can be associated with the event. If there’s no branding, the editorial team won’t be overly happy because the shot could have been taken at any gig really. Their preference was also for the majority of shots to be in landscape orientation as this suits their website design.
I was shooting with two cards in each camera, RAW on the main, and medium JPEG to the 2nd slot. We had runners coming to collect our 2nd cards throughout the night, to take back to Production for live social media uploads, so needed plenty of spare cards so we didn’t miss any of the action. Be careful if you’re formatting when you change cards… you don’t want to accidentally format your main card and lose all your RAW images.

f/2.8, ISO 800, 1/50s

f/2.8, ISO 3200, 1/125s

f/2.8, ISO 1600, 1/250s

Above are a few shots of talent at their tables. For the one of Dionne Warwick I politely asked her if I could take a picture and she obliged. You have to judge this sort of thing. It’s not good thing to pester the talent, or interrupt their conversations and enjoyment of the evening. A smile, patience, good timing, a little balls, and a friendly manner are essential. Sure, you can get a shot from a distance with a long zoom, but it’s much nicer to have them engaged and looking in your lens sometimes. If you’re not sure of your settings – take a test shot before, so you are ready to go when you need to be, as you won’t get long.

I mentioned the flash bracket earlier. I use this one from Really Right Stuff

Mainly because, as it mounts from the side of your camera, (and you need the matching L-Bracket for your model), it doesn’t obscure the AF-assist illuminator on the Nikon SC-29 ttl flash cord. Trust me – you’ll need this in dark rooms, no matter what the marketing says of your low-light autofocus ability! A lot of press guys use a tripod socket mounted bracket for shooting media walls / red carpet etc. which keeps the whole package very compact.
Something like this one

You can’t have your flash poking out sideways in portrait orientation, or you’ll most likely only be flashing the guy next to you’s arm and won’t get the picture. It’s also nice to keep the flash above the lens to avoid/reduce ugly side shadows and any risk of red-eye. These types of pics aren’t necessarily about the most beautiful lighting. From my experience, it’s more about speed, catching a fleeting moment, trying to get the subject to look in your lens, not someone else’s, having mere seconds to get the shot, competing with many other photographers and a celeb that just wants to get out of the cold and in to the venue with the minimum fuss. You have to take a few safetys in case you pick up someone else’s flash, or miss focus slightly. Handy to have a battery pack for your flash too, for burst shooting and rapid re-cycle times.

Learn how to balance flash and ambient, it’s not great having a load of shots with over flashed talent and completely black backgrounds. Plenty of info over at the Strobist blog for that.
So to close – last words… Be mindful of where you’re standing, the other photographers, and be courteous. A gentle tap on the shoulder is enough to get their attention, should you need a bit of space and watch out for the TV crew. You really don’t want to be getting in the way of a broadcast camera. There’s a funny story about that, but I’ll save it for another day! Enjoy. It’s a complete buzz, if you ever get the chance.

f/2.8, ISO 2000, 1/160s