I won’t get really deep into what gear to bring – I think you can get great images at concerts with whatever camera you have. Yes, having a good gear increases the odds in your favor, but trust me – a DSLR isn’t a requirement. Don’t believe me? Check out these images from a Switchfoot concert.

Anyway, let’s get on with the tips.

Play with lights

Concerts are usually full of bright lights. They’re there not only to make your subject visible, but to add color, create drama, and basically make everything in the concert look good. In fact, in some cases, the lights are as much a part of the show as the music is.

You can argue with the last statement I made, but you have to agree that including lights in your composition can make your images look even better.

Take, for example, the image on the right. I simply love the rays of light that seem to be coming out from the singer’s mouth. Don’t you?

Of course, trying to include lights into your composition makes lens flare a definite issue. Don’t be too worried though – sometimes the flare can add a bit of flavor to your image. If you really want to avoid it, DPS has a few tips to combat flare.

Get different angles

Yes, this is a tip that pretty much applies to any kind of photography, but it works particularly well for concerts. Most people only see concerts from one angle. If you’ve got the freedom to move around the venue, take full advantage.

Go up to the balcony, move to the middle of the mosh pit, get right up to the edge of the stage, and even go backstage if you can. Of course, it helps if you’ve got a press pass, or even better, an all-access pass. How do you get one of those? That’s a topic for another post.

While we’re on the topic of different angles though, I’ll throw in another tip – mix up your focal lengths. Go wide to catch more of the bright lights we talked about earlier, or get close enough to see the dirt under the guitarist’s fingernails.

Basically, the point is to get a variety of images during the concert. Face it – it’ll probably be quite a while before you see the band live again, right?

Watch their expressions

Concerts are about performances, but some of your best images from a concert will probably look more like candid portraits than anything else.

While they’re singing, the performers are usually doing exactly that – performing. If they were actors, they would be in character during most of the concert.

Occasionally, however, they drop their guard – and this is when you want to have your camera pointed at them. This can happen many times – in between sets, near the end of a song, or even during the bridge. If you’re lucky, you can catch a moment where you see, not the performer, but the artist and the person. On top of this, you won’t have the microphone blocking your subject’s face.

On the other hand, you also want to catch the most intense portions of a performance – those moments when your favorite performers are singing their hearts out. If you know the songs, chances are, you’ll know when these moments are too.

Lastly, bring your girlfriend along

Yup, you read that right – bring your girlfriend along. It helps if she’s as much into photography as you are (though maybe not as involved in the technical aspects), and it really helps if she’s as good as, or even better than you.

I’m lucky enough to have that help. You see, I didn’t take any of the photos you see here, including the pair below. Who did? I’ll give you three guesses, but the answer should be pretty obvious.

Did you enjoy these tips? I hope so, and I hope you enjoyed the images too.

Do you have any of your own tips? Please share them with us in the comments.

• Gallery: From Darkness to Light
• From Darkness to Light
• Portrait Shoot: Mateo
• Get Rid of Red Eye with Photoshop

He’s a Pro by MShades

CC-BY

With several cases of photographers being harassed by authorities, a new UK campaign against “suspicious” photographers, and even a whole magazine (or one issue) devoted to the supposed crime of photography, a thought popped in my head – if you want to be a famous photographer, you should get yourself arrested.

That’s why I’ve come up with these 4 tips to help you get attention from authorities. They all overlap a bit, but that doesn’t matter. What matters is that these tips work.

Bring the largest camera (or lens) you have

We all know that terrorists want attention – that’s why they plant bombs wreak as much havoc as they can. They want people to notice them so they can get their message heard. This means that terrorists don’t want to bring around small, inconspicuous cameras – they don’t attract any attention. If you want to look like a terrorist, bring out the biggest hunks of plastic, metal, and glass that scream out “I’m a photographer terrorist.”

Focus on famous landmarks

The more famous your subject target is, the more attention it gets. Shooting a famous landmark – one that probably 435,629 other people are shooting – helps feed the terrorist’s need for attention. What differentiates the terrorist from all those other people (aside from the fact that he wants to blow this place to high heavens), is the fact that he uses the largest, most sophisticated, and (most importantly) most attention-grabbing camera in his arsenal.

Spend a lot of time composing your shots

We all know that terrorists are meticulous planners. They’re such sticklers for perfection, in fact, that even their surveillance photos have to be gorgeous. Even if they’re only marking “the location of CCTV cameras,” they have to do this in such a way that the light falls on the CCTV camera perfectly. Otherwise, their photos will be rejected by their bosses.

Be obvious… be very obvious

I’ll say it yet again – terrorists want attention. Make it very clear that you have a camera (a large camera helps) and that you intend to use it. If you needs props or a supporting cast – think assistants holding reflectors, lights, and bags of equipment – bring them with you. If you make it very obvious that you’re a serious photographer terrorist, then you will get attention.

Do you have more ideas for getting attention from authorities? Leave a comment below.

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• Sneak Peek

Yes, Photoshop CS2 has a red-eye removal tool, but it doesn’t always work so well. This technique takes a bit more work, but it’s guaranteed to work. Want to learn more? Read on.

First, pick out your image. The image I’ve chosen is from ImmortalGoddezz – I found it over at Wikipedia. Our subject clearly has a case of red-eye – we’re going to fix that.

Next, open up your image in Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, or your image editor of choice. Once there, open apply a Channel Mixer adjustment layer on the image. You can do that by clicking Layer > New Adjustment Layer > Channel Mixer.

A dialog window will immediately pop up asking for a name for the new layer – name it anything you want. I suggest something descriptive like “red-eye removal” or something like that, but that’s totally up to you.

The next window that will pop up is the Channel Mixer window. It will show the red output channel and have default values of 100, 0, and 0 for the red, green, and blue source channels respectively.

What we want to do is get rid of the red – that’s why we’ll drop the value for that source channel to zero. Of course, we still want the output to hit 100%, so we have to raise the green and blue values to 50% each.

This will give our subject a sickly greenish-grayish-bluish skin tone, but don’t worry – we’ll fix that in a bit.

All we have to do is to reverse the mask for our adjustment layer.

More likely than not, pressing Ctrl-I will do the trick. If it doesn’t, just undo the last step and click on the little white box beside the channel mixer. Then you can fill it with black any way you want. Again, I recommend pressing Ctrl-I.

At this point, our subject’s eyes will be as red as ever. You might be wondering why we’re back at square one. Don’t worry – we’re going to brush the red away from her eyes. Select the brush tool, make sure we’re still on the mask of our adjustment layer (you didn’t select anything else, did you?), and select the default foreground and background colors. As you can see from the dialog, you can simply press D to do this.

Now you can brush over the red parts of her eyes – I choose to use a very soft (0%) circular brush that’s slightly smaller than the red area. Just move the brush around in small circular motions until you get rid of the red.

In the example to the right, I’ve already fixed one eye and I’m working on the other. You can also see the size of the brush I’m using. Again, small circular strokes are what you need to get the job done.

Of course, if you’re not too careful, you might take out more red than you want. As you can see off to the right, I’ve done just that. She looks like she has a patch of gray skin around her eye.

It’s a good thing we’re dealing with layer masks – we can put color back just as easily as we take it out. All you have to do is choose black as our foreground color and brush some color back in.

Just click on the little arrow shown on the right, or as the tool tip says, press X. Now armed with a black brush, you can hide unwanted portions of the adjustment layer. In this case, we want to brush away the gray around her eye.

There you have it! Now you can get rid of those spooky red eyes in your photos. As for our little project here, you can see the final result here.

• 4 Concert Photography Tips
• Contact Lens Workflow by Parc Cruz
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Philippine photographer Parc Cruz has posted a nice tutorial on Flickr for what he describes as his Contact Lens Workflow. Though I don’t agree with him on all the different steps, I definitely can’t argue with the results.

If you’ve ever wanted to get rid of red-eye, make somebody’s eyes stand out, or even change somebody’s eye color, this is a great tutorial for you.

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An ounce of prevention…

Before we get to the solution, however, let’s discuss a simple way to prevent the problem in the first place – synchronize your cameras. This way, when you process all the shots from an event, you know that you’re seeing all the images shot in chronological order.

If you’ve already shot the event, or if you simply don’t have the time to set the clocks on your three dozen different cameras, don’t fret – I’ve got other ideas for getting all your images in order.

A little disclaimer

I’m assuming, of course, that you have software that can edit the metadata in your images. I use you Adobe Lightroom for processing, so some of my instructions will be specific to it. If you use Aperture or some other software, I can’t really help you. You can, however, share your own tips below.

The point is this – if you can’t edit the metadata on your images, I don’t have any suggestions for you. If you can, well, read on.

Three tricks

There are three ways I can think of to make sure all your images are timed correctly. One involves manual labor (or lots of fingers), another requires remote triggers, and another involves a simple clock or watch. All of them involve giving all your cameras a common frame of reference.

First, let’s discuss the manual labor method. Count the number of cameras you have, then get as many volunteers. Have them all point at something or someone – you, for example. Have them all fire off a frame at the count of 3. Easy enough, right? You might need to take a few shots, but eventually, you’ll get all the cameras firing at the same time. Of course, the more cameras you have, the less reliable this method becomes.

Next on the list is the trigger method. If you have enough equipment, you can attach remote triggers to all your cameras. Point them all one subject, press the trigger, and there you have it – synchronized shots.

The last item (and the one I recommend) involves a clock. Look for a clock or watch with a second hand – all you have to do is get a shot of that same clock with every camera in your arsenal. You can choose to do this at the start, at the end, or even at any point during the event. You won’t have synchronized shots, but you will have a time reference common to all your cameras.

Put it all together

By now, I think you get the idea already. Give all your cameras a common time or reference to synchronize to, then edit the time codes on the images when you get to a computer. How do you do this?

In the Library module in Lightroom, you will find a panel for Metadata. You’ll probably find it off to the right. If you can’t find it, you can press Ctrl-3 to make it appear.

Look for the field marked Capture Time. If you opted for either of the first two tricks above, you want this field to be identical among all your reference frames. If you went with the clock method, you want this field to match the time on the clock down to the last second. We’re going to do this by clicking on the little icon off to the right, but wait.

Aside from the reference frame, you want to select all the photos taken with that camera. Do that first (I usually keep all images from one camera in a folder), then click that icon.

Another window should pop up now – this one labeled Edit Capture Time. Here you can set a new time for your reference frame – all the other frames you selected “will be adjusted by the same amount of time.” Repeat this step for all the images from each camera, and pretty soon, you’re going to have all your images in chronological order.

Once again…

If you want to have all your shots from a multiple camera shoot in order, synchronize the clocks on your cameras.

If you can’t avoid that, you’ve got a few tricks to help you synchronize your images in post-processing – my recommendation is to get a shot of a clock with a second hand in every camera.

Lastly, get Adobe Lightroom, Aperture, or some other software to help you manage your images – it will make processing them a whole lot easier.

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It’s about time though that we make this delete button obsolete. Why? Let me count the ways…

1. The LCD on your camera lies. You got that right – the LCD on your camera lies. As of this posting, there is no way to calibrate the little screens at the back of your camera. Even if there were, there you can’t always control your ambient light – and that can sometimes make a gorgeous image look like crap on that tiny LCD. Wait until you get to a larger screen, then make your judgement.
2. You can’t trust your fingers. If you delete images straight from you camera, you will, at some point, delete an image you don’t want to erase. Call it clumsiness, Murphy’s Law, or plain bad luck – but whatever you call it, it will give you a headache. Yes, you can try to recover it when you get back to your computer, but in the meantime, you can’t use your memory card.
3. Your batteries are weak. That LCD at the back of your camera is a power hog, and the more time you spend reviewing, trimming, and deleting images, the less time you have to shoot. If you keep deleting images, before you know it, you’ll end up with an empty battery and an empty memory card.
4. You’re too slow. Even the best multi-taskers cannot shoot and review images at the same time. If you keep deleting images from your camera, you’re going to miss everything you want to shoot. At the end of the day, all your shots will be reminders of the ones that got away.

Yes, I know there are times when it’s just so tempting to delete in image from your camera, but do try to resist the urge. Cameras are made for capturing images. Leave the editing to the computer.

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edit: I’ve replaced these grids with more aesthetically pleasing versions.  The new grids function exactly the same – I simply transplanted the innards (the straws) into a better-looking exterior.  It’s still a DIY project, but it doesn’t look cheap anymore.

In the whole Strobist spirit of finding inexpensive ways of playing with light, I made some grid spots for my flash. So far, I’ve seen two versions of the DIY grid spots – the cardboard or coroplast version, and the drinking straw version. As you can see from the image off to the left, I opted for the straws.

If you’re looking for instructions on making these little babies, stop right now. Look back up and click on some of the links in the first paragraph. On the other hand, if you’re looking for examples of how these grids work, read on.

The three shots below show how the beam from your flash spreads out. These examples show from left to right, a bare flash, a flash with a 2cm grid, and one with a 5cm grid. I’ve included the disc off to the right as a reference – those flashes are roughly five inches away from the wall.

Notice how the light comes out as a nice little circle with virtually no spill. If you want to light your subject and nothing else, these gridspots are great for that.

I’ve got another example for you – this time with a model. Our model in this set is somebody most of you probably know: Street Fighter‘s Ryu – or at least a 6″ version of him. Again, the examples show a bare flash, a 2cm grid, and a 5cm grid.

You can see the setup for these shots here, but the basic idea is that Ryu was lit from roughly a 45 degree angle off camera right.

If you’ve noticed, the gridded lights pretty much focused all the light where they were pointed. There’s no light bouncing all over the place – only light on the subject. Want to add a rim light or back light that won’t flare into the camera, put a grid on it. Want to light your subject while keeping the background dark, grid your light.

Now, if only I could make a larger grid…

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