On Stage Photography

Since August 2008, I have been photographing stage performances almost twice a year.

A whole new world of photography has opened up for me. Never before had I the opportunity to photograph so many stage performances, ranging from traditional and classical to pop and rock...I love stage photography because of it's unpredictable lighting. Not to say that i'm already a professional on stage photography but I did learned a lot in the process and i'm happy to share with you some of the tips of on stage photography.

1. Get as close as you can.

I once come throught a words like this "If you think you are not shooting a good photo it is because you don't get close enough" So,in order to get close you need to be on the scene early to secure the front seat.You must have a Telephoto zoom lens to get even closer to your subject. For dramatic effect, get super close to capture only the face ;close-ups of their dressing, jewellery, tattoos and other ornaments can make interesting images too.




2. Avoid to shoot in the middle.

To avoid these troublesome obstructions such as the shadow caused by the microphone you need to shoot from one side.There is time when i will shoot from the middle, when i want to include the lighting on the stage together with the performers.


3. Don't use flash

Some venues disallow flash photography anyway. Instead, use a high ISO setting. I usually set my camera to ISO 1600, increasing to ISO 3200 if necessary. To use such high settings, you need a relatively advanced camera (I'm Using Nikon D90 & D300)that will produce good, low noise images at high ISO.

4. White Balance.

I prefer Auto White balance as the lighting changes too frequent on stage, you would get nice, almost perfect colors in one shot but orange and red in the next. I think i'm ok with it as i shoot what i see. If the composition and exposure is good and i'm sure you like that "orange " photos.

If you really don't want that to happend to you as AWB might have been over-reacting to the color changes in the stage lighting. You can try shooting with a fixed color temperature, set at about 3000K to 3600K. Lastly, my advice is to shoot in raw so you will not worried so much on the white balance.



5. Use single-area focus

Under low light conditions, the auto-focus function sometimes take too long to work.
My advice is to use 'single-area' focusing mode, where the camera focuses only on the subject that you point at.Normally i point it on the performer eyes during close up shoot.

6. Capture movement

It could be . Such movements impart 'life' to the image. Don't always 'freeze' your images, captured movement such as a hand strumming a guitar or beating the drums,jumping, dancing and bla bla. In other words, to slow things down while they are moving.

To capture movement, you will need a relatively show shutter speed ranging between 1/15 and 1/30 of a second. Make use of the Shutter priority on your camera to get the result you want.



7. Use high speed shooting to shoot as much as you can.

Taking more pictures and producing more good images as i say before stage photography is unpredictable - the lighting, the movement the fireworks and so on. Those things are not there ready for you to shoot, it will come out of no where when you just finish you single shoot and it happend when you lose you hand from your shutter button.When the time you press it again, it's gone. You may not want that to happen don't you?

What you should know about your memory card?

Don't turn off your camera immediately after each shoot.
When you take a shot, memory card will take time to record the file. (You'll see a green / warning blinking on your camera) If you turn off your camera while the warning light is still blinking, there is a risk that you will encounter an corrupted file. As well as losing images, you could corrupt the memory card entirely. This happend when you see " Card Error" on your camea LCD screen when you insert your memory card.

Beware of Magnetic Field
Beware of anything that has a strong magnetic field such as the stereo speaker. It will destroy your memery card.

Format instead of Delete
Do you ever have this experience before?After each photo session, you are eager to look at the photos you just finished taken. You will delete some photos from it which you are not satisfied with and the last thing you do is copy your pre-select photos to your computer.Are you? If yes, then you need to beware of it as this will also shorten the life span of your memory card. (I'm not sure whether it is true or not as i'm being advised by one of the branded memory card sales resperentative.) It’s best to format memory cards in a digital camera, not via a computer. Even a brand new memory card should be formatted in-camera before using it for the very first time.Unlike erasing, Formatting memory card will improves the overall performance of a card.

Do not overload your memory card.
Don't finish the quota that given to you. If your memory card can save up to 1000 pcs of photos, don't fully filled it up. The lighten the load, the faster the memory card can process.

The faster the better.
Choose those memory card with at least class 6 rating because it offer high transfer speed that will help you to save your time but not your money. Remember time is precious and priceless! :)

Used 2 instead of 1.
Some cameras have 2 memory slots, not only for the extra capacity but it also offer extra security care to you. If one card is lost, or becomes corrupted, you have an additional one on hand. Treat the extra memory slots as your insurance policy.

Portrait Shooting

To captured a portrait photo that can speak a thousand words is not really as easy as you think. It is not about simply look for a model and start shooting. Personal Portraits or model shooting is about combination, combination of the model to the shooting environment, the design, the feeling, and the most important factors is the timing. People tend to have a wrong perception in which my photo will look great if my model is photogenic or good looking. Personal portrait or model shooting is about finding the right angle/view from the model and emphasize the unique point through your camera. People faces look different from different angle, how to find the most suitable angle when shooting a portraits is based on the experiences and the skills of a photographer. For a professional Portrait photographer, everybody is photogenic and everybody have it own uniqueness to tell in a photos.

Snap Shot Vs Potraits

What is the different between snap shop and potraits when it comes to photographing people? In my point my view, Snap Shot is a pictures of a person that shoot without taking much consideration about what the pictures is going to tell.Photographer who taking a snap shot have not much consideration into choosing the background, the lighting, the posture and etc. Just a simple click and the so call "potraits" is done.

How about Potraits? A Potraits is very different. A Potraits is something about a person/a group of people that a photographer want to reveal.It could be an character and a moment happpiness, sadness, anger and etc. You can ask your subject to smile fakely several time until you get the picture you want in snap shot but when you have the change to come across the subject happy smile and manage to capture that moment you will understand what i mean by that. When you take your time to make a potraits, the photographic experience is something you will not forget for the rest of your life.It is an "original" picture that worth a thousand words. Remember this, a good potraits does not mean your subject must be a beautiful girl or a good looking guy and you do not need many photographic accessories/equipment to take a good potraits - Your DSLR itself alone is already a good tools and the subject of ur potraits can be anyone around you.You might ask be this "how to take a good potraits?". My answer is take your time to practise as its takes time for your photographic vision to mature.

WISDOM Camera Checklist

I come across W.I.S.D.O.M Camera checklist in an article which i think it might be useful for shooting Success.

W - White Balance
If you shoot your picture in JPEG format rather than raw, it is highly important that you have a good understanding of your camera white balance setting.why i say so?It is because you can't fix it later like you can with raw.Set the right preset for the lighting condition, such as Daylight, Tugsten or Indoor.

I - Image Quality
Shoot in Raw for better Image Quality.Only shoot JPEG in the situation where you want to turn images around quickly.

S - Sensitivity
Start by setting you camera's sensitivity with the min ISO , eg 80 or 100. Only increase when there's not enough light.

D - Drive
Make sure you;re not left the drive mode on self timer mode, and set it back to single shot or continuous burst shooting.

O - Optics
Plan you photographic task ahead and choose the right lens for it.

M - Memory
Your camera's is useless without memory card.Format your memory card before you leave for your photgraphic task so you've plenty of spare capacity.Remember to bring along a spare memory card in case the one you're using have break down.

I myself sometime do make one of the mistake listed above and i think it is very helpful to me if i keep my camera W.I.S.D.O.M with me all the time.Hope you guys find this useful adn start implement it.