PhotoShumi » concert photography

Naoito : Izpon : Juicy – Live @ Best Wishes

dan diaz — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 12:21:58 +0000

The first time I shot live artists (Naoito) at Best Wishes I was worried abaout sharpness, clarity and getting good exposures in bad lighting and I failed. The second time (Ucoca, Toruman & Kei) I somewhat let the lighting control the style of the photographs to get a warmer more stylized result and I did the same last night with a few different camera tweaks to keep the noise down. I’m not sure if the Best Wishes crew or the artists necessarily like the style but it’s gritty, soft, noisy, monochromatic and has a distinct film like look which I like. I shot the gig with the Pentax K10D + Super Takumar 55mm 1.8 and shot most of the night at f/2~2.8 with an ISO of 1250. Check out singer, songwriter & percussionist Naoito, percussionist Izpon and percussionist Juicy’s (Hifana) myspace pages.

Ucoca – Live @ Best Wishes

dan diaz — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 00:58:05 +0000

Last set of photos from the Ucoca, Toruman & Kei (Afnica) gig @ Best Wishes.

Toruman – Live @ Best Wishes

dan diaz — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 11:19:56 +0000

Some shots from last Saturday night, here is Toruman live at Best Wishes.

Kei (Afnica) – Live @ Best Wishes

dan diaz — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 09:27:51 +0000

I photographed another live event at Best Wishes last night, artists performing were Ucoca, Toruman & Kei (Afnica) all from Tokyo I think. Like last time, the lighting was shit as well as too many people packed into a small venue so I was pretty restricted with my angles and positions. This time I opted for the DA* 50-135 instead of the Takumar 55mm f/1.8, even though I lost a full stop in speed, I gained a little versatility in my focal lengths. The following photos are of Kei and her band.

Naoito – Live At Best Wishes

dan diaz — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 14:08:24 +0000

Naoito (below) is an instrumentalist and front man in KINGDOM☆AFROCKS and percussionist with Rickie-G. He was accompanied by fellow KINGDOM☆AFROCKS members IZPON (percussion) & Daisuke (guitar) at an intimate acoustic show at Best Wishes bar in Fukuyama, Hiroshima on August 12th. I was asked to come down and enjoy the show so I brought the K10D & Takumar 55mm just to take a few shots. It was pretty dark in there so I mainly shot at either ISO 1100~1600 and at apertures f/1.8~2.8 which made it harder to get a sharp image but I got a few decent photos. I also tried dragging the shutter with the on camera flash to create a little controlled movement where I would then shoot at ISO 400 with a smaller aperture like f/5.6. This is the third time I’ve photographed Naoito live, 1st with Rickie-G in Dec ‘08 and 2nd again with Rickie-G at Green Green Music Festival ‘09.

Green Green ‘09 – Some of the best of…

dan diaz — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:39:13 +0000

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/4.5 : ISO – 560: Shutter – 1/750 : Focal Length – 65mm

When looking up at Rickie-G I saw a perfect opportunity to shoot under him and take advantage of the sky as a background. With the trees and temple in the background plus Rickie looking forward and pointing in the other direction, I think it is well balanced composition that captures Rickie-G in his moment.

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/2.8 : ISO – 560: Shutter – 1/250 : Focal Length – 135mm

Nothing says live concert like fisting the air, a big fuck you to the man…whoever he is. I really like this photo as it captures a powerful moment during the Cool Wise Men set, he just got back on stage after dancing with an audience member. It’s not the sharpest photo but I didn’t have to crop the image much but I darkened the background a little for a more contrasted feel.

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/3.5 : ISO – 1100: Shutter – 1/180 : Focal Length – 135mm

When the spotlights were first turned on I saw that this would be a great shot when it gets darker so I came back while Cool Wise Men were playing and took a few photos of their sax player silhouetted with the harsh harsh spotlight profiling his body. This is one of my favorite photos of the day.

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/3.5 : ISO – 800: Shutter – 1/750 : Focal Length – 135mm

I really like the contrasting elements in this photo of wired and metal parts with a placid facial expression. I also really like the tones and vertical and horizontal lines in the background.

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/3.5 : ISO – 800: Shutter – 1/350 : Focal Length – 135mm

I really like this photo as it gives a different perspective of the stage and captures a part of the artist while the main subject is the equipment. What I also like is the size factor where Spinna B-ILL is the tallest, then guitar and then amp, even though B-ILL is cut off from the waist, his height is seen in his casted shadow.

Pentax DA* 50-135 : f/4 : ISO – 280: Shutter – 1/1000 : Focal Length – 135mm

This guy was the most interesting and charismatic performer of the day and plays in The Black Bottom Brass Band. Nothing special about this photo apart that I really like his facial expression and it just captures him having a good time. I also like composition with him foreground right and the old temple in the background with the many lines.

Green Green ‘09 Music Festival

dan diaz — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 12:51:15 +0000

A few weeks ago I photographed the Green Green ’09 Music Festival at Koshinji Temple, Jinseki, Hiroshima. The show ran from 12 noon to 9pm, 6 bands (Spinna B-BILL, Cool Wise Men, Rickie-G, Likkle Mai, Black Bottom Brass Band and B:Ridge Style) all playing for about an hour each. Initially there was supposed to be another photographer, but he had to cancel so it was up to me to do a two man job. My tasks included photographing the bands, punters, stall workers, staff, the temple & surrounding areas and anything else that took my fancy. I had access in front and on the sides of the stage plus behind the drum kit, in the crowd, back stage and on the riser for the video which was about 5 meters high. So all up I had a lot of options and angles to play with which made it easy to get a variation of good shots but being constantly on the move for 9 hours was hard on the body the next day.

My equipment for the day consisted of my Pentax K10D, DA* 50-135 (f/2.8), DA 18-55 (f/3.5~f/5.5) and a manual 50mm (f/1.7). Also a Vivitar 285HV flash, diffuser, two camera batteries that lasted me the day, 17gb in memory (8, 4, 4 & 1), 2 sets of eneloop batteries for the flash, charger, phone, cigarettes, snickers bar, wallet and chewing gum, all tucked nicely in my Lowepro A200 Sling bag all weighing up to at least 5 kg. Although heavy, about 3kg without the camera and 50-135, I kept the bag with me all day as I like to swing it around to my chest and lean my elbow on it for better balance. A week before the show I also bought a hand strap for my K10D and removed the neck strap as it’s uncomfortable for extended periods. The hand strap worked great, was easy to maneuver and the camera felt secure in my hand when idle.

Overall, I think I took some great shots of all the talented bands and artists capturing the vibe and as much action and emotion as possible. The DA* 50-135 is a fantastic lens for this type of work, if it had a little more reach I’d be happier but only because I like close-ups, for full and half body shots, it did the job perfectly. During full sun light (12 noon ~ 4pm) I had no issue with metering, aperture and or shutter speed as I chose whatever setting I needed for a particular shot but when sunset started around 5pm I had to start adjusting my ISO and aperture to compensate for the dimming light. From 6pm ~ 9pm, all main light was artificial with three spotlights on each side of the stage, although continuous and unmoving they still caused the spot metering to be thrown out of whack on occasion. In the last few hours, my setting consisted of a f/2.8~3.5 aperture and an ISO of either 800, 1100 or even 1600 in extreme circumstances. The K10D’s ISO past 560 is pretty noisy and at 1600 nearly unusable but with a few post processing techniques, they came out fine.

As for the DA 18-55mm kit lens, I only used it to get some wide angle shots of the stage and crowd, while ok optically, I was getting some very strange over exposure problems which forced my to dial down the EV to -2.0. I was hoping to use the small manual Pentax-M 50mm f/1.8 for candid portraits of the artists as it’s not as intimidating as the relatively large 50-135mm but due to time constraints, I unfortunately didn’t use it at all. All up I used about 16gb of memory and took approx 1300 photos all captured in RAW PEF files which I deleted about 500 blurry, duplicate and uninteresting photos. I then gave the concert organizers a DVD of the jpg converted images with my full EXIF details intact. I will also be making a blurb.com book of the event for sale at Green Green Music Festival ’10 and at Best Wishes Bar in Fukuyama, the people who organize the show.

So what did I get out of this? I didn’t get paid that’s for sure but what I did get is a lot of experience, confidence and photos for my portfolio. My credited photos will also be featured in a live music magazine in Japan and I’ll no doubt get a few free beers at the bar so overall it was a great, challenging and fun experience. Some things that I could have done better were taking my time when photographing people. I had imagined taking a lot of photos of the artists and people in the crowd but due to a little confidence issue, I was relatively quite as I feel I’m bothering people, especially the artists.

The following slideshow consists of about 70 photos so be patient or head over to flickr and see them individually there.

Rickie G – Live Acoustic : Fukuyama, Japan

dan diaz — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:44:57 +0000

Rickie G is a fast rising Japanese reggae musician from Tokyo and through Best Wishes, played for the second time in Fukuyama for their 8th Anniversary. Rickie G and his band played an acoustic set and I was asked to photograph the event.

A usual live photographer would be armed with a DSLR that can has high ISO (3200 or more), a wide to normal zoom (17-50 f/2.8), a normal to short tele (55-135 f/2.8) and a fast 50 f/1.4 and maybe something longer for larger venues. Unfortunately, I’m not a pro concert photographer and I also don’t have this setup. I on the other hand use a very capable Pentax K10D although it has a very noisy high ISO of 1600, a Jupiter-9 85mm @ f/2.8 for closeups, a Super Takumar 55mm @ f/2.8 for most of the photos and a Soligor 28mm @ f/2.5 for some wide angle band photos. Although the J-9 is capable of f/2 and the Super Takumar capable of f/1.8, these apertures produce too shor a depth of field and focusing actually becomes harder. So I would focus at the widest aperture (brighter focus screen), focus as best I could and then close it to f/2.8, making the focus area deeper. Although this worked the majority of the time, some of the photos were still a little blurry.

Before the show I asked the band if I could use flash (Vivitar 285HV) for some of the photos and they said no problem as long as it wasn’t right in their face. Usually, flash isn’t used in live photography but I think it has it’s place, especially at faster paced music with a lot of movement, like rock, punk and heavy metal shows, a slow shutter speed effect can really produce some interesting motion. For this show though, the flash didn’t really cut it. I took a few photos but as it was an acoustic show, movement was minimal and the flash didn’t suit the photos so I went for the high ISO, available light option, unfortunately, the venue was pretty dark which did produce a few noisy photos. That night, over 2 hours I took about 450 photos and I could barely open my eyes after the show.

From those 450 photos, I deleted about 80 duplicate looking photos and about 100 blurry and unacceptable photos, leaving about 270 photos I gave to the organizers of the show. Overkill? Probably, but I don’t get the opportunity to shoot live events often so I just kept snapping, thinking of different positions and angles and hoping they were in focus.

The final photos were not all great, but I think they all offer something interesting. Of those 270 photos, about half are monochrome and the other half in colour but all are kind of dark and moody as they asked me to add my little spin on the photos, resulting in I think a more intimate feel.

Here’s a few photos from the night.

Okayama Tattoo Bash Vol.2

dan diaz — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 11:37:44 +0000

Here are some photos I took from the Okayama Tattoo Bash Vol.2 @ Crazy Mama Kingdom in Okayama. Read my Photo Essay at JPGMag for a full report of the event. Check out the full set at flickr.