Workin’ All the Angles

Last week, I photographed Shinedown in concert at the Filmore New York for Kerrang Magazine. I’ve done portraits with them before, but this was a live concert review.

One thing I always try to do is shoot from dfferent angles. At the beginning of one song, lead singer Brent Smith got the crowd going by saying that they should get louder as his hand went higher in the air.

There was a spotlight right at the front of the stage pointing straight up, so it gave him a “monster light” effect. I immediately crouched down in the pit right in front of him so I’d have his hand in the foreground. All of the other stage lights were off, so the background went dark.

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/500 sec, F/4)

Later in the song, he brought his hand down again to work the crowd, but since I already had the low angle shot, I stayed at eye level.

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/800 sec, F/4)

Now I have two completely different images of Brent doing basically the same thing. It gives me more options in the edit and I can decide which angle to send to my client.

In this case, I sent both.

More concert photos below.

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/500 sec, F/4)

(Nikon D700, 70-200 lens, ISO 2500, 1/160 sec, F/4)

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/800 sec, F/4)

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/200 sec, F/4)

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/800 sec, F/4)

(Nikon D3, 24-70 lens, ISO 2500, 1/640 sec, F/4)

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