Coming from Eugene I am not used to local bands sounding good. They have the instruments, and know how to play them but the end result usually isn’t all that great. It is funny because a lot of really good bands have come out of Eugene, but at some point the music scene decided to move to Portland. So with some trepidation I agreed to catch a live show from a friend’s band, not expecting much. If nothing else at least it would give me a chance hang out with friends and try some music photography.
Thankfully the band – Love Lies Dying – was actually quite good. The show took place at the Ash Street Saloon.
I was tempted to just sit back the entire time and just enjoy the show, but I noticed that no one else was really taking pictures. My D90 is a good camera, but when it comes to the kind of low light photography that most music photography demands – well there is a lot left to be desired. If I were going to try and make an honest living out of this sort of thing I would definitely want a full frame camera like a Nikon D700 or a Canon 5d mk II. Regardless I am a strong believer in working with the tools that I have, so with that in mind I threw on my fastest lens and decided to test a few shots – only to find a blurry mess. I tried again with a flash and found the results were clear but the flash had washed out the ambient stage lighting.
I was just about ready to give up when I got inspired by the work of a flickr contact of mine named Todd who runs the site ishootshows. I actually fired up the flickr app on my iphone and started browsing his stream to pump myself up. I am not going to pretend to be able to take as good of shots as Todd, but I wasn’t going to leave the show without giving it a second try.
In the end I had a great time and the band appreciated me shooting the show. The lessons I learned: take lots of shots, at least some are bound to be clear and make heavy use of Lightroom’s Luminance Noise Reduction.
