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.

Related posts:

1. The Ruse
2. Band Portrait: August Burns Red
3. The Gaslight Anthem

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

Related posts:

1. Evanescence, a preview
2. The Sounds
3. The Gaslight Anthem

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.

Related posts:

1. Metric
2. Stars
3. Matt and Kim

April 30, 2009 – The Sounds played a “secret show” to celebrate the release of their new album Crossing the Rubicon. Santos Party House was packed to the gills. Rumor has it that even Semi Precious Weapons frontman Justin Tranter attended the invite-only event.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES

With very little light and energetic subjects like The Sounds, flash was an unfortunate necessity for this show. I shot at ISO 800 while dragging the shutter down to 1/30 of a second. A single on-camera SB-900 speedlight was used for all of these photos.

Related posts:

1. The Sounds
2. The Sounds
3. Semi Precious Weapons

May 3, 2009 – If all of the preview posts in my stream aren’t a dead giveaway, I’m currently sitting on a mountain of images that desperately need to see the light of day. Here’s one from No Doubt’s phenomenal headlining set at the end of The Bamboozle Music Festival, 2009.

Related posts:

1. Yes. More Photos of No Doubt
2. No Doubt at Bamboozle 2009
3. Preview: Bamboozle 2011

May 1, 2009 – Rock stars came out in droves for the annual Road Recovery Benefit Concert at Nokia Theater in Times Square. This year, the nationally recognized music mentoring organization honored the legendary Wayne Kramer of MC5. The star studded line-up included Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction), Tom Morello (Rage Against The Machine, Audioslave), Iggy Pop, Jerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains), Gilby Clarke (Gun N’ Roses), and many more. Stay tuned for the full set of images!

Related posts:

1. Road Recovery Benefit 2009
2. Road Recovery @ Nokia Theater – 17.04.2008
3. No Doubt at Bamboozle 2009

March 27, 2009 – For Immediate Release – “LA’s, The Ruse, rock Blender Theater, make people smile and are terribly nice guys.” Fronted by John “Mr. Nice Guy” Dauer, The Ruse gave a dynamic performance worthy of the epic rock stylings of their new release Midnight In The City.

Photographer’s Notes

I met members of The Ruse a few hours before their set just as the band arrived for load-in. Mark Stolze (bass) and John Dauer (vocals) immediately struck me as too nice to rock hard if such an assumption exists. Guess what? I was wrong. Dead wrong. in fact, The Ruse are performing proof that nice guys can bring the rock to the hole.

I shot this set from the crowd at my favorite venue in the city, the Blender Theater. While the amazing lighting design at Blender is usually more than enough to produce beautiful images, I augmented the house lights with a set of three off-camera SB-600 speedlights triggered wirelessly by an on-camera SB-900 in commander mode. Both flash power and camera exposure were set manually and adjusted as needed.

I shot extensively with the 24-70mm on the Nikon D3. The 70-200mm saw sporadic use for downstage shots of Jim Bilus (guitar). Despite my stage left position, drummer Jason Young was largely obscured by either his cymbals or John’s off-center singing position.

End Notes

A big shout out goes to John, Mark and the rest of The Ruse. As the photos show, you guys played a killer set.

Related posts:

1. Semi Precious Weapons
2. Mike Orlando and Russell Allen
3. The Sounds

If you like Cut Copy’s albums, you’ll love their live set. With elegant instrumentation and hard hitting beats, the Aussie trio simply doesn’t disappoint. Add to this mix an opening set by Matt & Kim, a killer light show and a few thousand dancing fans and you’ve got yourself one hell of a concert.

PHOTOGRAPHER’S NOTES

Cut Copy’s set was one of the more difficult I’ve done lately for no other reason than challenging lighting.
The special LED light rig used on this tour is capable of a wide range of colors but emits very little quality light. The result is largely dark photos with one or more of the RGB channels completely blown. The color casts are so extreme that they cannot be corrected for using the kelvin color temperature settings on camera – they must be left as is or dealt with in post as I have for a number of the images above.

In cases of extreme color casts such as these, I generally try to find either a less extreme white balance setting or a neutral color point from which to completely normalize the color. The neutral point could be the silver mic head or even the whites of a musician’s eyes.

I shot with the 24-70mm and 70-200mm on the Nikon D3 at ISO 3200 and f/2.8 at around 1/250 of a second.

Related posts:

1. Sara Bareilles
2. Matt and Kim
3. The Ruse

Photographer’s Notes

Although you wouldn’t necessarily know if from the photos, the lighting for this set was a dismal mix of strobes, backlighting and red wash. Luckily the Nikon D3 files are as flexible as they come. I shot for the first three songs with no flash and took a few shots from outside the pit on stage right.

My exposure ran roughly from 1/250 at f/2.8 and ISO 3200 to as low as 1/60 at the same aperture and ISO 3200. Although ISO 6400 is totally usable, I generally avoid it if the actual quality of the light is poor.

In all honesty, Matt and Kim are best photographed with flash in smaller venues with fewer rules. They crowd surf, go even more nuts, the fans love it and the photos are a lot more exciting.

My Favorite Matt and Kim Video, “Daylight”

Related posts:

1. Cut Copy
2. Leonard Cohen
3. Septic Flesh

2.27.09 – Unleashing wave after wave of piercing shrieks and wailing guitars, the UK’s Cradle of Filth took the Nokia Theater by extreme metal storm. The house was packed with black by the time Dani Filth lead his corpsefaced crew through a crushing set that spanned Cradle’s massive eight album catalog.

Photographer’s Notes

From a technical perspective, Cradle of Filth at the Nokia Theater was one of the more difficult shoots I’ve done. The pit was narrow enough to keep each of the six photographers nearly stationary in addition to dodging the 4 or 5 security guards tasked with pulling surfers over the barrier.

It was a metal show, what did I expect?

The band was lit by blue backlighting and green frontlighting for most of the first three songs. The combo is a rock photographer’s worst nightmare. The lighting on Dani tended to flare white whenever he took center stage.

I shot with the 14-24mm and 24-70mm zooms on the Nikon D3. I would have liked to have shot a few closeups of Dani with the 70-200 but could not get far enough to the side to capitalize on the extra reach and flatter perspective.

My exposure varied wildly by remained around ISO 6400 and 1/80 at f/2.8 when the lights were down and went as low as ISO 1600 at 1/250 and f/4.0 when the bright backlights flared.

Related posts:

1. Septic Flesh
2. Reel Big Fish
3. Tip The Van