Tips on photographing local concerts?

I havent quite gotten around to buying that Pentax K-r I posted about recently, but it will be very soon; I'll have the money in one or two more paychecks

While waiting for the money to come in, I think it's time to start preparing myself for the type of photography I want to do: concerts and band/musician shots. We have a small cafe/record store (That's right, half is a record store and the other half is a little cafe. It's like a hipster Cracker Barrel) that has local play on some nights. I'm planning on contacting them soon about photographing during their shows. This venue is kind of small, but it seems popular with the "young" people (aka people younger than me). They dont really have many "good" photos on their facebook or tumblr page, so I'm hoping they'll like having someone photographing their shows if I allow them to use my photos on their website or something. And hopefully if the bands playing like the pictures, maybe they'll want me to do some pictures for albums or their facebook/websites. I know that's wishful thinking, but I'm actually feeling optimistic today.

Since my portfolio up to now is quite unimpressive because my work and school schedules keep me too busy to do anything than study and work, I might have to start off working pretty cheap, but I'm hoping to work my way up to higher paying gigs.

I've read on the internet about how to shoot concerts, where the lighting is usually hard to work with and always find the same basic stuff: Wait for the lighting to get just right, use lenses with wide apertures, use colored lighting and/or hard lighting to your advantage, dont use flash, and that type stuff. Does anyone have any other advice/suggestions?

BTW, I have two 50mm lenses and a 135mm lens and know about the crop factor thing when using a camera without a full frame sensor

I've been shooting a lot of literary events in the past year--a bit different from concerts, but often in venues with stage lighting or in little clubs, so many of those issues are similar. I use a 5DII, but if you've got an APS format camera, your 50mm and 135mm should be perfect. Once in a while you want a wide shot, if you can get really close or if you want to show the crowd (presuming you've got enough light for the crowd) or if you need a lot of negative space for a magazine cover or a poster where you'll be running text over the image, but realistically, most of the shots you'll end up using will be frame-filling shots of the performers.

If your camera has live view, consider a Zacuto finder. It's indispensable for shooting video, if you do that and don't have a high-end external monitor setup, and it lets you focus stills accurately handheld in a dark club, and if you shoot with live view, you're also shooting more quietly, since the mirror is locked up, which is important in a performance setting.

Here's a Polish detective novelist I photographed a bit over a week ago. The image ran in B&W in the paper, maybe 4x5" on a full-page interview in a tabloid-sized newspaper supplement, in color on the website--

My?le? o czytelniku, nie o sobie -?Nowy Dziennik - Polish Daily News

The image quality of the file I sent them was better--sharper and not as flarey, and had I known they would run it in B&W, I'd have done the conversion myself, but such is life. At least they remembered my credit. As you can see, it was stage lighting with colored gels. I was using an 85/1.4 and shooting probably at ISO 1600. The original frame had the author sitting next to the translator of his novel, but she got cropped out, so this is about 1/4 or 1/3 of the full image area.

To take advantage of the colored lighting, shoot raw, and set the white balance on a calibrated monitor for warmish tungsten--around 2300-2700K. If you're using Adobe Camera Raw, the "fill light" slider is your best friend for hard stage lighting, but if not, you can adjust the curve.

Thanks David.

I wouldnt mind having a wider lens, but that's going to have a while. Hopefully my lenses will be great for what I'm doing for now, as you predict

I'm more interested in having a wider lens for composition and lens variety rather than because any bands I shoot will be in magazines or newspapers. I've got some friends in different bands, and they'll be my first subjects. They're good, but really not much different than the loads of other local bands in the area. Also, I'm not so sure my photography is at a good enough level to be shown anywhere on my own personal blog and band websites

Hi, I can't really give you any technical advice, being a rather lousy photographer myself, but with regard to shooting for friends/cheaply, even if you feel you don't qualify for pay you should definitely sell your work and not give it away. Unfortunately, that goes double for friends. I photographed friends' bands and did it for free because 'hey, I'm just practicing/learning' - but they made use of my work for their websites and other promotional material so, yes, it was work. Unfortunately, neither they nor I were particularly media savvy at the time so a) I didn't get any credit at all (there goes promotion for my work - didn't even put the photographer's details into the IPTC portion of the files) and b) I made the mistake of giving them a disc with ALL of the files on it - pre-culling, pre- post-processing! A shot I took wound up in the local paper which, had I known where it was going to end up, would have been deleted at the outset. That was one case where I was glad not to be credited!
So, get your friends into the habit of realising your time and energy is worth some dollars and don't show/give anyone full resolution files or shots you don't want to see the light of day. Only show them your best stuff and they'll think ALL of your work is that good. No need for anyone to know you shot half the show with the lens cap on

I don't know if that was the sort of advice you were looking for.... but I hope it helps all the same.

Back when the world was young I went to a "secret" press conference in El Lay where a cheeky new bunch of musicians were on a tour. I got a whole mess of photos, good and bad and because the band was the Beatles I am still selling my photos. On stage you can take all sorts of things and if its funky somebody will like them if they like the band. All bands are nobodys until they are somebodys so just do the best you can and respect their work.