Shooting Live Music - Editing with Red Stage Lights | San Diego Music Photographer

One of the hardest parts of photographing bands is working with the house lights in smaller venues. Pretty much anyone with any camera can take a good photo at a multimillion dollar music venue. But when working in smaller clubs, you usually only have a very limited use of lighting to shoot in. And usually these are pretty much only red and blue lights. You rarely get a small venue that will have white and yellows...and if you DO shoot in one, they rarely use them.

So you want to shoot a friends band or a dope local band that plays in a smaller venue. You shoot them, get back home and find that the heavy use of red lights have made the entire band look like a Veruca Salt look-a-like tribute band, eh? No worries. Those heavy red/purple tones turn into amazing whites when you convert the image to Black and White.

Using Adobe Lightroom, simply click the "black & white" selection while in "Develop" mode. You will instantly see how the once horribel red and purple look now gives your image some depth and even tones.

You can save it just as it is and be done. It will look decent. I am a huge fan of black and white photography [especially for bands] so I usually add a few more adjustments to the image to give it a little more drama and dynamic.

This is what my selections look like on the finished image below.

1. Contrast - love adding contrast. Seems to make the image look smoother and pulls all the tones together.

2. Shadows - increase the shadows, makes the blacks look not as flat and fall all together. Give the image a more dimensional look.

3. Blacks - add more blacks to the image. This will make the blacks look more black and dark. [increasing the shadows allows you more wiggle room with how much of the blacks you can increase]

4. Clarity - Again, adds more dimension to the image. Defines solid lines in the image. Makes the subjects pop out of the background a bit.



Also to note, this image was shot with a camera that has AWESOME high ISO performance. Shooting with a camera that has a really good high ISO performance goes a super long way. My previous camera was a Nikon D300s, which probably taps out at maybe ISO 800 for a solid image in dark lighting situations. If you are shooting with a camera that does not have a good ISO performance, remember you can always make these adjustments in post to make the image look good. Don't rely on the image on your camera at the show too much.

Quick Tips 

Try NOT to go below 1/80th sec. on your shutter, especially if the band is moving a lot. All of your images will be blurry and not worth saving.

If you are not familiar with the band or the venue. Sit back and just watch the first song. Try to get a feel for how they move. Get a feel for where the stage light is the strongest. Or better yet, if the band you want to photograph isn't first on the bill, watch the opening bands. The stage lights in small venues rarely change too much, if at all, between bands. So what you see in the first and/or second band will most likely be the exact same thing for the band you want to photograph.

Final image below shot with a Nikon D700 | 24-70mm Lens @ 1/80th sec at 2.8 | ISO 5000