Caged In
May 08, 2008 by David Bergman
Last week, I photographed Ministry in concert during the band’s farewell tour.
I knew it was going to be an interesting night when I walked in and saw them erecting a 10-foot high chain link fence in front of the stage.
The show wasn’t easy to photograph because I had to shoot through the fence most of the time. Also, this band must be allergic to light because they didn’t have any.
Luckily, Al Jourgensen would poke his head out over the top of the low fence section every once in a while.
What’s with the “no flash” rule at a show like this? The default rule for concert photography is “three songs, no flash.” Since I was on assignment for Kerrang Magazine, I was able to shoot the whole show, but why no flash? During the set, the band had a lot of strobe lights. I can’t imagine that they would even notice a photographer’s flash going off.
I’ve asked performers about it and they never have a problem with flash. Maybe it wouldn’t be appropriate at a quiet James Taylor show, but no one cares at a heavy metal gig.
So I kept the strobe on my camera “just in case.” Of course, as soon as Al popped his head out from behind that fence, the flash somehow accidentally went off. Oops. Not sure how that happened.
In smaller venues, I’ve cheated a bit and cajoled the lighting director into letting me know when he’s gonna strobe, or strobe for me.
Take a deep breath, and wait for the Dataflash/what-have-yous to go off. During the strobe, just blaze away on high speed, wide open at 1/15th or so, ISO is kind of variable depending on the strobes, and I can almost guarantee there’ll be one “keeper”.
Hello,
on Al’s former MySpace profile, you can find the story of him been hit by a baseball, when he was a child. Since then, he feels pain everytime some bright lights are shining directly in his face. He wrote, this is the real reason behind him wearing sunglasses most of the time.
Naldan, that certainly is tough if it’s true, but like I said, the band had incredibly bright strobe lights going off during most of the show. Also, the fans are constantly taking pictures with their cameras and flash. It just seems counter-intuitive to now allow the professional photographers the chance to make high-quality images that can help the band generate publicity.
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Some bands spend thousand on lighting rigs. If you’re a professional photographer then you’re going to have your photos published, and my guess would be they’d rather you photographed their set and lights than bring your own.
A lot of flash photographs are less than flattering, no?