You’ve finally graduated from taking pictures with your cell phone, or your little point-and-shoot camera
and entered the world of Digital Single Reflex cameras. You’ve got some gear now. Even went out and
bought a dedicated flash gun that will allow you to bounce flash all over the place. So you’re ready to
hit the clubs and start shooting bands that you love, right? WRONG. I you’re thinking of going in that
gloomy, badly lit club and you’re gonna start using that ridiculous flash gun, you’re dead wrong.
Sure…you CAN do it. Most of the local Indie bands are going to love that you put them on your Facebook
page and the venue doesn’t care. You’re probably gonna get hot and thirsty while shooting the show,
so you’ll be buying drinks of some kind off of them all night. So who does it bother? Well, it DOES
bother the band, whether they tell you or not. Having that huge flash go off in their faces can do a lot of
harm. I’ve seen singers get temporarily blinded from it, and have to back off to regroup, while the band
continued playing. So even if the band says they don’t care, and you have your flash bouncing…it can
still be a bad experience for all involved.
And then there’s videographers--some bands will pay good money to have a crew come out and shoot
a show for them. When you’re shooting video, every time a flash goes off, it causes the video to look
horrible, as if a bomb went off. That’s exactly what happened--a bomb went off. While you are exposed
to compensate for your flash, the videographer isn’t--so that bomb of light that goes off RUINS his work.
Just something to consider if you want to be a real concert photographer, because there’s a bunch of
etiquette you need to practice when you’re working shows. And if you don’t know what you’re doing,
you can make life miserable for others who do.
Case in point…I was shooting video for a huge, two day Metal festival in Pittston, PA. The event was
called “Metal Meltdown 2014” and featured some of the areas and bordering state’s top Metal bands. I
was shooting the first two songs of each band’s set to document the event. While I much prefer
photography, video can be a lot of fun as well and a good way to make some extra cash. So I don’t have
all the gear you need, but I have a whole lot. My productions can be pretty good if all goes well--and
they can go like shit when things outside my control go badly. Say I get a bad feed from the sound
board. Not a lot I can do about that, for the most part, that’s out of my control. I would hate telling a
client that the video isn’t good because I was out of focus, or I didn’t set my exposure correctly. THAT
would be something of my own control, and if those were the case, then I’d be in the wrong business.
So say you’ve got it all covered, but the video looks terrible because of flash? What do you do? You
can break the video down into frames, and fix the exposure on the flash-bombed area, but you’re talking
about a WHOLE lot of work and that may just not be possible--especially if you’re also dealing with cell
phone “photographers”. Then you’re gonna have a SEA of flash.
So what do I do, Jonezy? You can be a nice, polite videographer and explain to the offending flasher
that what they are doing is killing your work. Maybe, explain to them how it works, and that they should
be able to shoot a band without flash if they have halfway decent gear. If that doesn’t work, you could
offer them some of your gear to use, if they have the same model camera as you.
Oh wait…you tell me they don’t have Canon, but they have Nikon? And then they tell you that you’re
full of shit because there’s no way that you can shoot a show in those conditions without FLASH? And
then…the next thing you know…this “pro” photographer (that claims he’s shot for ROLLING STONE) is
calling YOU names and questioning your ability as a photographer because you’re currently just a
“video guy” (even though every band in the place knows you cuz you’ve shot them in dimly lit clubs
with no flash a thousand times)?