Photographing a Concert or Live Performance

When photographing concerts or events with poor lighting conditions, it is very hard to capture the performer without getting blurry images. 

Most of these events will not allow any kind of flash photography.

So, you must rely on you DSLR Camera with high ISO (the sensitivity of light capture on the camera sensor) and a fast lens with an aperture of F2.0 (that means your lens opens wide to let more light in). 

I covered the Latin rock band Mana on February 27 at the Oracle Arena with permission for the press to cover only 3 songs. 

Mana is the biggest Latin group in the world with a history that covers three decades.  There were only about 6 photojournalists covering the event. 

We were escorted by the Arena’s PR to the front of the stage that’s called the “pit”. 

I must have shot over 900 stills in under 15 minutes. 

Keep in mind that photographing under these circumstances is very hard to take photographs with your camera set to Auto Focus. 

You must really work fast on manually focusing and shoot on burst mode, that means try to shoot as much as you can.  You have less that a second to do any kind of composition because every second counts. 

 If you ever get a chance to cover a concert or a live performance always check your gear a night before or better yet a couple days before! Things to check for: Batteries, Memory Cards, Permissions, Contact Numbers and more memory cards. 

And remember that when photographing live events you always want to look around the area where you are allowed to photograph and stay there..DO NOT try do anything sneaky and respect the time permitted to you.

See some of my Mana photos here and here.

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