How to photograph rock stars at concerts.

Photography of Bryan Ferry during a concert

If you want to take good photographs of rock stars whilst they are performing and it's not possible to take a tripod, you can get some reasonable images with modern digital cameras. The following photographs of Bryan Ferry were taken with a modest Canon Powershot at recent concert in Sheffield UK. The most obvious advice is to try and get a seat as close to the stage as possible so that if you decide to try and use flash on camera, the lighting will fall on the subject and the photograph will be well lit.

The photographs here were taken with and without a small flash unit on the camera. If you take photographs of rock concerts with a flash, the subject will be correctly lit but the background will be dark. If you use available light i.e. spotlights installed specifically for the concert, you will have to photograph the scene at a shutter speed of 1/30th of a second or more and I would recommend shooting on autofocus for the best results.

Available light can also change the colour balance of an image, depending on the coloured lighting, and can produce interesting lighting effects.

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