Everyone Wants to be a Rockstar

Including me. 

Last night I went out with my friend Jeff, to see his friend's band Monroe Monroe at the Rockstar Lounge in Denver. This is the first time I've been behind the lens at a live show; I've been the subject to some photo shoots as a musician, and I've always been disappointed in the outcomes from other photographers. Granted, we never had a professional making the shots, but it isn't THAT hard.

Right?

 It's harder than it looks. No control over lighting, that's the hardest part, and the subjects are rocking out, so I had to use the fastest shutter speeds possible. I set my ISO at 800, which made the photos kind of grainy, but I didn't want to use too much flash; when I'm on stage, flashes popping off can be very annoying. 

I ended up needing to use a good amount of flash, but the bands didn't seem to mind. What I ended up with were a handful of great, but overexposed shots, which were easy to fix in Lightroom. I dialed down the exposure in almost every photo I processed.

 I like the picture above, but it would be way cooler if I had used a tripod.

The headlining band, Young Cities, opted to use a smoke machine, which made me cringe at first. I hate smoke machines. However, it took a bland stage with questionable lighting, and turned it into a colorful backdrop for rockstar photography. Brilliant.

This was a ton of fun, and a real challenge. I learned a lot about low-light shooting, and finally found a use for stupid ass smoke machines. Now I want to run out and buy some remote flashes, and a lens with a larger aperture so I don't have to sacrifice sharpness with that high ISO setting. I look forward to shooting more live performances in the future.