Concert Photography at Photoshop World

Something I do once a year for the last eight years has been to visit Photoshop World in Las Vegas, kind of a Disneyland for photographers, photoshoppers, and illustrators.  

This year, I also went to a pre-conference class, “Real World Concert Photography” with Alan Hess and Scott Diussa. 

I’ve photographed concerts in the past and now I want to know what I’ve been doing wrong all these years! 

My camera of choice is the Canon 5D Mark III and I used a Canon 24-105mm lens.  I wish I had my 70-200mm lens because there were times I wanted to zoom in on the drummer in the back, but I still got some usable shots of him. 

Much of what I heard reinforced what I already do.  I set ISO to 1600, NO FLASH (NEVER!), I start out at 1/200^th of a second shutter speed, and open up the aperture to the highest setting, which in my case was f/4.  Sometimes when the white light came up on the band, I had to increase my shutter speed, but for the most part those settings worked fine on manual.  I also used auto white balance.  Shooting in raw, I could correct for color temperature within Lightroom. 

Our group photographed a band called “Rebel Soul,” a southern rock band that appears in Las Vegas.  Joey is their lead singer.  They were incredibly cooperative.  Essentially, we had three songs to take photos.  Then Alan and Scott would take each band member and give advice along with suggesting things to the photographers, and then they did three more songs. 

Until My Next Adventure, 

See You On Down The Road!

Jim Patterson

See all of my photos from this adventure on Flickr