*Cover Photo By Melina Novo*
The first time I found myself in a photo pit, I had no idea what I was doing. It felt like everyone around me had been shooting for years and knew all of the unspoken rules of being a concert photographer, while I barely knew how to correctly use my camera. So today, I’m sharing what I wish I had known when I was starting out in concert photography.
- Never post a photo of your photo-pass/laminate online. It’s a huge security risk and could get into the hands of someone potentially dangerous. Always make sure to cover the pass with an emoji or blur it out before putting a picture of you with it online.
- Yes, you can shoot the whole show! To seasoned photographers, this one might seem a little obvious, but I remember standing in the back of my first show and having no idea if I could photograph everyone or just the band whose publicist issued me the pass. Thankfully, the photo-pass allows you to photograph the first three songs of each artist’s set with no flash regardless of who you got the pass through. (Note: this is not always the case when photographing a festival).
- Take off your backpack in the photo pit. Perhaps another simple one, but after a show in NYC where I kept bumping into my fellow photographers in the pit, I later learned that you should take off your bag and stash it somewhere safely near or under the barricade during the set. It’s common courtesy and will give you the freedom to move through the tight space and get the shots you want.
- Understand the settings on your camera. During the pandemic, I was primarily practicing photography through self-portrait shoots (as most of us probably were), so diving back into live music was incredibly nerve-wracking. The lighting is always changing, people are constantly moving, and you only have the first three songs to really capture your images. I had a hard time understanding my camera settings for live shows until I read this article by Matty Vogel; to this day I use it as a reference when it comes to a general understanding of where my settings should be during a set.
- Always shoot in RAW. I spent the first year and a half photographing all my shows in JPEG and never understood why editing the image was so difficult until my friend pointed it out. Taking a photo in RAW will allow you to adjust color, lighting, and anything else you want to change while a JPEG won’t give you the freedom to fix as much.
- Presets are your friend! In the early days of my photography career, I used a ton of presets when editing my images. They helped me learn the basics of LightRoom, how to correctly color my photos, and later led me to finding my own editing style that I use today.
While I still have so much more to learn and plenty of room for growth in my own photography journey, these are some of the basics that I found were most helpful to know at the beginning of my career. You can find more of my work on my Instagram and feel free to reach out with any other photography-related questions you may have.
Happy Photographing!