I’ve always enjoyed hearing the stories behind why every creative individual chooses to push themselves to create something, especially when there’s no hidden agendas or money involved. That’s what this recent journey into photography has been for me: my escape. And although I’ll always have a spot in my heart for graphic design, once it became my main source of income it ended up losing most of it’s meaning to me… especially after doing it professionally for so long. I know...first world problems, I guess.
How does this all correlate with a blog post about music photography? Well, I feel obliged to re-iterate that out of all the things that has saved me from myself throughout my life, it has been my love for music. I'll always have an endless amount of gratitude towards any musical act that has created something that somehow managed to speak to me directly when I needed it most at one point or another…and yeah, I guess that pretty much explains why I’ve also been addicted to live shows for almost half of my life. I hope that the photos I take at concerts not only compliment and capture the energy from these artists while they perform, but also have them assist in explaining what makes these people so special to me and countless others and hopefully even create a few new fans for them in return.
TL;DR: I love photography and the subjects I choose, and I’m a passionate nerd so I like documenting and explaining why.
Alright, sorry for the lengthy introduction. Here’s my first entry on one of my favourite beat makers of recent memory: Mr. Carmack.
"Make music like no one's listening"
The thing that has always intrigued me about artist/producers (especially ones that mostly focus on instrumentals and remixes) has been how they’re not really given as much credit as the featured vocalists. This is something that has been going on forever in the industry and is often overlooked by most people, especially with the recent popularity of streaming and the over-saturation of music in general.
So for those that aren’t familiar with Mr. Carmack…he is by far one of the most talented and versatile producers/artists in the game today. He’s worked with well-known talents like Taleb Kweli, Anderson .Paak and Kehlani just to name a few, and it’s been pretty cool seeing his surging growth in popularity over the years especially for fans that like to educate themselves on the people behind their favourite music.
Maybe I’m just biased for all fellow Filipinos slaying the music game today at such a grand scale (I have an equal fan-boy obsession with other talented musicians and artists with a Filipino heritage like esta, sosupersam and ta-ku), but to me, he’s definitely a rare breed who much like the well-known Kaytranada, has paved the way for a lot of other up-and-coming producers and artists who are directly influenced by his distinct progressive style.
Here’s a few recommended tracks and sets for those that are interested:
(SET STARTS AT THE 1:11:50 MARK)
Shooting Ain't Easy
I’ve shot a number of different shows since I first picked up the camera, with each one presenting their own distinct and fun challenges. If I were to compare this show to another one I took photos of in the past, it would be my first one: Sango & Monte Booker’s show at the similarly intimate Velvet Underground venue nearby (check out those photos in my Music gallery if you're interested). That particular show was my wake-up call on the challenges all photographers face when shooting concerts (especially at smaller venues with no photo credentials) and forced me to learn how to properly expose for extremely tricky lighting conditions while dealing with the super passionate crowds who are usually up front and center. This particular show wasn’t as rowdy as the Sango one, but it was still full of energy and I was pretty much stuck in one spot the whole night. The most challenging aspect was the lighting at this show…it was a lot more difficult to work with than any other one I've took photos of.
I chose to bring my 25mm, 45mm and 75mm f1.8’s (50mm, 90mm and 150mm FF equivalents) for a few reasons: I didn’t know how the Drake was both layout and lighting-wise since it was my first time attending it and because of this, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to gamble and stay up close for more intimate shots or play it safe further in the back where it’s usually a lot easier to shoot but not nearly as rewarding. Those three primes are also more faster than my pro zooms so they handle low light better and since they are a lot smaller they are much easier to sneak into shows with strict camera policies…which unfortunately I was no stranger of experiencing numerous other times (the most recent time being a few weeks prior at the Soulection show at Mod Club. I was forced to leave my camera gear locked up with security, but that’s another can of worms I’ll probably discuss in a future blog).
I have always had a habit of arriving early to shows, mostly because I like having the option on being in the front and center-ish depending on the type of show, who I’m seeing, as well as the stage layout. Now that I’ve started to bring my camera out to every one I go to, I have to be even more keen on where I end up in the crowd and just hope that people in my vicinity are more mellow as opposed to overly aggressive and rowdy. It’s tough because as both a fan in a sold out crowd and a photographer trying to get the best shots, I’m forced to make these judgment calls beforehand and somehow compromise between the two by choosing where to stand before the venue fills up and not let other late-comers sneak up and obstruct my view.
With all that in mind, I ended up choosing to stand to the furthest right of the stage close to getting blocked off by the stage wall and speaker, but ended up with a pretty good view to work with once the openers were done and Mr. Carmack came up to perform.
Although I successfully chose a decent spot and was equally lucky enough to be surrounded by mellow fans for the most part, I soon realized there were a few other big factors in getting some decent shots of the performance: the lighting and some stage equipment.
As mentioned earlier, this was by far the most challenging lighting setup for a show that I’ve shot at and I’ll try to explain why the best I can: there were numerous stage lights set up directly behind Mr. Carmack (as well as others to his left and right facing the crowd) that varied in brightness and would transition to boring single colours of red, blue, purple and yellow...which results in some pretty bland concert photos that have to be converted to B&W. So with this intense light set up AND almost more importantly no lighting whatsoever to fill the front of him…it was really difficult to expose for and the majority of the shots I took ended up being throwaways. I found that with majority of the shots that I managed to keep were during the transition between the red and blue as they retained some of the natural colour and were easiest for me to edit in Lightroom.
Now for the second key factor: the stage equipment. As soon as Mr. Carmack came on I realized that a lot of my shots and compositions were pretty much ruined by a second microphone that would either block or get too close to his face. I ended up making the best of it and had to wait for the moments to shoot when he wouldn’t be obstructed by it…which unfortunately happened far less than I would have hoped, especially during the main part of his show.
After the first half of his show was over, he thanked the much-appreciative crowd and announced that he would play a bit longer using the CDJs…which was pretty cool as it offered me a few more opportunities to switch up my lens and capture some close-ups without getting obstructed by the previously mentioned microphone culprit. Unfortunately the lighting was stuck in an orange state for this part of the show so I had to convert the photos to B&W.
That’s pretty much it. As a fan, Mr. Carmack and his homies killed it and although there were a few technical difficulties during the performance that forced a couple of resets, I enjoyed this show a lot more overall than the Soulection show a few weeks back because I felt that Joe Kay barely played any original remixes from the Soulection roster (no J.Robb tracks…really?) and felt that he sort of played it safe with his tracklist sticking with more mainstream songs to cater more for the Toronto crowd…but that’s just my opinion.
And as a photographer, I learned some new things that I can try to improve on for next time. Although I didn’t get as many keepers as I would like, I’m happy with the few I managed to get. My Olympus gear continues to pleasantly surprise me especially since I bumped the ISO pretty high for these photos, and although the OMD E-M5ii paired with the f1.8 primes are capable of handling these types of shows, I have started to consider picking up the highly regarded f0.95 Voigtlander lenses and even the Olympus f1.2 primes for the near future to handle the image noise better for these types of concerts…but they're all pretty pricey so we’ll see.
Thanks for reading this uber-long novel of a first post. Hope you enjoyed it and come back for the next one.