Modern Day Zero, King Thief @ Play:STL — 2007.09.22

Tonight I shot two acts at the Play:STL festival, a three-day festival held in the Loop. While I wasn’t familiar with the bands before, I thoroughly enjoyed photographing King Thief and Modern Day Zero in their outdoors sets. With sets starting at 5:00 and 6:10, respectively, both bands benefited from sweet light on the West-facing stage.

Modern Day Zero

In the above shot, Modern Day Zero’s Zach Broderick on guitar strikes the perfect pose for the Tokina 12-24mm f/4. While the ultra-wide is normally too slow for indoor concert photography, daylight provided a great opportunity to use the Tokina. Free access to the front of the stage to get up-close and personal with the bands made use of the wide-angle a must for high-impact shots.

King Thief

The Tokina 12-24mm f/4 and Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 provided the majority of the evening’s best shots, while the Nikon 85mm f/1.4 was useful for a few close-ups. While indoor shows often necessitate ISO 800 and above, shooting at ISO 200 was a nice luxury for today’s outdoor performances.

For the complete sets from these gigs, check out the images on Flickr:

Modern Day Zero

King Thief

About the author: Todd Owyoung is an internationally published music photographer specializing in concert photography and band portraits. He also grills a mean steak.

Contact Todd for image licensing and assignments wherever the rock show lives. You can also get in touch with Todd via Twitter.

This entry was posted on Saturday, September 22nd, 2007 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Music Photography. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.