New York Music Photographer Chris Owyoung - The Best Music Photography & Band Portraits » concert photography

A Few from the Circle Pit

chris — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:43:57 +0000

Photos from the mosh pit at Decrepit Birth's performance at Gramercy Theater, NYC. November 7, 2009. (photo by Chris Owyoung)

Metal is almost a spiritual experience for a lot of fans. Nowhere else is this more evident than in the circle pit. While I don’t recommend that music photographers jump right in unless they a) have both camera insurance and b) feel pretty confident that they can stiff-arm a 175lb dude doing the windmill, I don’t think the mosh pit can be ignored when documenting the scene.

All of these images were taken during Decrepit Birth’s performance at Gramercy Theater using the 14mm end of the Nikon 14-24mm. ISO was high, shutter speed was low and a single SB-900 was used for the main light source.

Decrepit Birth

chris — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:08:52 +0000

Decrepit Birth performs at Gramercy Theater, NYC. November 7, 2009. (photo by Chris Owyoung)

Decrepit Birth writes some of the most lyrically bleak songs I’ve ever heard. Taking into consideration that they’re a death metal metal band, this is a good thing. As depressing as their written content may be, their performances are anything but – they kick some serious metal ass.

The band’s dynamic live show owes much to the stage presence of lead vocalist Bill Robinson, who keeps a level of pace and hype that is rare well beyond the confines of the genre. Intensity, thy name is Bill.

Photographer’s Notes

Shooting metal shows is hard enough without the sickening knowledge that you’re missing a money shot every millisecond your camera isn’t pointed at Bill Robinson.

Decrepit Birth was in the middle of a lineup of six bands. As you can see from the examples, I was doing a much better job of balancing the flash with the ambient light. Check out the concert photos from Warbringer and Augury for my lens choices and camera settings.

Augury

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:18:25 +0000

Augury performs at Gramercy Theater, NYC. November 7, 2009. (photo by Chris Owyoung)

If you’ve never heard Augury‘s precision shredding, furious double drumming or ridiculous bass lines, the rapt concentration depicted in many of these photos won’t do the Canadian prog metal monsters the justice they deserve. If you’re familiar with how intensely technical guitar and drum work applies to the genre, you can probably tell that Augury completely destroyed.

It’s refreshing to see a band that clearly cares more about nailing the riffs than it does about the amount of hair it can swing (although as you can see, Augury bassist Dominic Forest, succeeds at both).

Photographer’s Notes

As I did for Warbringer, I shot primarily with the 14-24mm and 24-70mm zoom lenses with a single SB-900 speedlight on-camera. Exposure was set at 1/60 – 1/30 at ISO 2000 shooting at an f-stop of either f/3.5 or f/4.5. The flash was set mostly to TTL minus 1 EV in matrix metering mode.

Warbringer

chris — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 05:03:20 +0000

Frontman John Kevill throws me the horns after Warbringer's epic performance at Gramercy Theater, NYC. November 7, 2009. (photo by Chris Owyoung)

To say that Warbringer brings the pain is an understatement of epic proportion. The band’s performance is more accurately compared to the end result of a brick of C4 strapped to a bunny rabbit – bye bye bunny, bye bye.

That isn’t to imply that the guys in the band aren’t amazingly nice. As the lead shot is evidence of, charismatic frontman John Kevill is all about the fans. Warbringer’s set was incredibly fun to shoot.

Photographer’s Notes

Shooting with a single SB-900 on-camera, I had a lot of fun playing with the ratio of flash power to ambient light. As usual, my strategy was first to set a pleasing manual exposure for the ambient light and let the flash do the heavy lifting when it came to lighting the subject. I had my work cut out for me in frontman Jon Kevill whose on-stage energy seems boundless. Keeping up with him was hard enough without adjusting the exposure on the fly.

I ended up with a background exposure of 1/60 – 1/30 at ISO 2000 shooting at an f-stop of either f/3.5 or f/4.5. The flash was set mostly to TTL minus 1 EV in matrix metering mode. This worked well for the most part except when the ambient light went to black and the flash tended to overexpose slightly.

Shooting all six metal bands on the ticket with flash confirmed three things for me. 1) Shooting with flash is light shooting fish in a barrel. 2) You don’t need to shoot in bursts to get awesome stuff. 3) As long as you’re obeying rule #2, the performers don’t notice the flash at all.

Evanescence

chris — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 18:03:01 +0000

Amy Lee of Evanescence performs at a secret show at Manhattan Center Grand Ballroom. November 4, 2009. (photo by Chris Owyoung)

Before playing to a crowd of 40,000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Evanescence performed an intimate “secret show” to just over 1,000 diehard fans from the New York area. Tickets reported sold out in 5 minutes. Though the band performed beautifully throughout, Amy Lee’s stripped down piano solo Good Enough (from Open Door, 2006) stole the show. Evanescence is currently writing material for release in 2010.

PHOTOGRAPHER’s NOTES

Whenever my enjoyment of a band’s music predates my job as a concert photographer, I put more pressure on myself to do my best work. While I compete with myself every time I enter the pit, the mental stakes are always higher when I’m a fan of the band. I would also like to think that the more I like the music, the more potential there is for killer photos.

Since Amy Lee is both the frontwoman and the only founding member in the current Evanescence lineup, I naturally focused on her for the lion’s share of the first three songs. As I do with every band I shoot, I did my video and still research and knew that Lee would have me running from one side of the pit to the other hunting for the sweet spot angles around her often double-handed microphone grip. If this sounds like a lot of work, it was.

Since I don’t like the distortion on the 14-24mm for female leads, I shot mainly with the Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 zoom and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR. The standard zoom was wide enough for full-length shots while the telephoto gave me the reach I needed to shoot downstage.

The lighting, while not ample, was often good enough to produce a decent exposure at ISO 2000 and 1/300 and f/3.5.

If you have any questions or if you just like the photos, leave a comment.

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Good Enough

The Gaslight Anthem

chris — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:17:46 +0000

The Gaslight Anthem performs at Terminal 5, NYC. October 15, 2009.

When frontman Brian Fallon told the crowd that the band had “slept in a lot of dirty places to get to the show” last night, the crowd erupted in applause. Though the guys hadn’t necessarily had access to a working shower recently, the fans didn’t seem to mind; New Yorkers trekked to the far west side in the worst weather this fall to see their hometown heroes tear it up at Terminal 5. New York City loves The Gaslight Anthem and Gaslight loves it right back.

Move photos and shooting notes after the break.

Photographer’s Notes

Having just dragged 35 pounds of camera gear across town in the rain, I was pleasantly surprised to see a bright and beautiful The Gaslight Anthem backdrop adorning the stage. I knew this probably meant that the band would have enough lighting for the signage at the very least. As luck and the lighting designer would have it, virtually the entire band was covered in nearly white light for most of the allotted three songs.

Gaslight played a hugely energetic set that had the fans going nuts and every photographer in the pit begging for more time.

I shot mostly at ISO 2000 on the Nikon D3 with a shutter speed of 1/160 at f/2.8 – little to no exposure compensation was necessary after the fact.

Lens Use:
Nikon 24-70mm – 70%
Nikon 70-200mm – 25%
Nikon 14-24mm – 5%

Shout Outs

A huge thanks goes out to Jon for hooking up the last minute credentials.

Angelspit

chris — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:38:59 +0000

What is Feme-Fronted Australian Industrial music like? If you said “I have no idea but it’s probably covered in a $h!tl0@d of latex” you answered correctly. The Aussie industrial duo Angelspit is currently touring in support of KMFDM.

Preview: Warped Tour Portraits

Chris Owyoung — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 04:40:15 +0000

How much fun was Warped Tour? THIS MUCH FUN! - Nick Kent of TAT at photographed at Warped Tour, 2009.

I took a few days off planning my wedding (yes, it’s in a few days) and caught up with my brother Todd for a insane day of band portraits at Warped Tour. As you can see, TAT was one of our favorite bands to work with.

The Owyoung Brothers knocked out a bunch of portraits for you, including exclusive shoots with Escape The Fate, Single File, Big D and the Kids Table, After Midnight Project, Forever the Sickest Kids, TV/TV, We the Kings, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, and more. Stay tuned!

Lighting Info

Todd and I rocked between three and six Nikon speedlights all day long. With the exception of one 15″ softbox, the speedlights were fired bare. Eat your heart out Joe McNally, this was straight up Nikon CLS at it’s best.

Evolution

chris — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 18:07:36 +0000

May 2, 2009 – If your cover band is good enough to trick Rolling Stone into believing you’re the real deal, you’re probably pretty good. The New York based Journey tribute band, Evolution, did just that at the 2009 Bamboozle Music Festival in East Rutherford, NJ.

While I’m still a little disappointed that I didn’t get to see the real Steve Perry come out of retirement, Evolution absolutely rocked and I’ve got the photos to prove it.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES

Luckily, Evolution was given a light show fitting of the real Journey. With an exposure around 1/500 at f/4.5 and ISO 1600, there was both plenty of DOF and plenty of stopping power to capture every one of Hugo’s melodic rock gestures and guitarist Adam Holland’s copious guitar face.

The wonderful texture of the photos is thanks to the banks of white strip lights that lined either side of the stage. Even though it’s a pain in the ass to meter for, you gotta love bright side lighting.

How to Take the World's Best Concert Photos

chris — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:59:05 +0000

July 13, 2009 – The wait is over. My concert photography article is now live over on the PhotoShelter blog. The article is part of their new LEARN series (a totally sick collection of business resources for photographers).

Thank you to everyone who submitted topics for the piece on my previous post and on twitter. Even at 7-pages and 3,300 words, the article still doesn’t cover everything that you all asked for and that I wanted. I’ll be writing about everything I left out in the weeks to come. In case the article creates more questions than it answers, drop me a line over on my contact page.