December 8, 2008 – In their headlining performance at The Pageant, melodic death metal pioneers In Flames brought the sonic devastation to the stage with harmonized guitars, heavy beats, and vehement vocals.
Photographer’s Notes:
This set was a beast to photograph. Red, blue, and green washes dominated the first three songs, respectively, schemes that created massive challenges for In Flames’ set.
The second half of the third song featured some white warm white light from the back of the stage, and this shift created the opportunity a little more separation than the previous songs.
Overall, backlighting was the name of the game for this set.
The band’s monitors were set up about a meter back from the edge of the stage, which was actually a good thing, given their height and numbers. Any closer and they would have obscured even more of the performers.
Singer Anders Fridén was an interesting target, as he would often swing his long dreadlocks during the breakdowns. Fridén stuck mostly to the front of the stage, often singing with a foot up on one of his monitors.
I shot this set with the usual: Nikon D3, D700, 14-24mm, 24-70mm, and 70-200mm. Of the three lenses, the 24-70mm was used for the majority of these shots, and could have easily handled the entire shoot.
End Notes:
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 9th, 2008 at 11:50 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2008, Anders Fridén, Björn Gelotte, Daniel Svensson, in flames, Jesper Strömblad, live, melodic, metal, Music Photography, Peter Iwers, sweden, tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Wow Todd!
You really did a great job and I’m impressed of what you got out from these difficult conditions!
I’m wondering how you handle the red color… for example in the second picture. It’s a nice, smooth and sharp picture.
I’m always having a lot of trouble with red color.
Hey Todd,
As above, not bad considering the shitty conditions…
Depressing, they are coming out in Feb & I was looking forward to shooting them…however Nine Inch Nails are on mainstage pretty much at the same time, so I think seeing this has made my decision
Dan
Great shots as always Todd. I shot this tour a few days ago and between a malfunctioning lens and the beastly lighting, I had more fun trying to shoot crowd surfers than I did In Flames. (Gojira and 36 Crazyfists were big fun though.)
Hey Dan, thanks for the comment. For images where red is the dominant/only color, I find that it really comes down to exposure. Images with info mostly in the red channel will look less sharp at 100% than images with a “full” RBG mix, because of the Bayer pattern.
With the second shot, I shot with auto WB during the show and then manually switched to the WB setting for sodium vapor, around 2700K. This reduced the brightness of the image, but also helped tame some of the hot spots in the image, too.
Hi Dan,
Thanks for the feedback. As you can no doubt tell from the lighting in these images, this performance wasn’t really the ideal situation for making images. :)
If you have to choose between In Flames and NIN, definitely go for the latter. Easy choice.
Hi Brandon, thanks. I may have shots from Gojira and 36 Crazyfists coming up. The lighting for this tour was challenging all around, but the openers did have more light on them (albeit all backlighting!).
Believe me, even the D3 had trouble with the very low light and mono-color washes of this performance.
That first shot may contain some microphone eating but I still think it looks awesome.
Thanks for the tips. Perhaps I’ll try switching the Fn button to ISO on my D40 since I’m pretty much on ISO 1600 all the time anyway.
One thing about that blasted red channel, in these photos it looks like they used no other lighting along with the red lighting. Does that make things a bit easier or am I just doing it wrong when I have mixed lighting but red on the face of the performer?
In any case I think you’ve managed to make the red photos look good.
When there wasn’t mic eating, there was dread whipping – there were no other options! ;)
Only red lighting is more simple than more mixed lighting (mostly red with slight accents, for example) in some regards, as each lighting treatment will have a different exposure in some cases. Regardless, I think you have to tailor the treatment of the image (exposure, post-processing/editing) to the best suit the most important parts of the image.
Great shots Todd. When I first looked at them, I think I had the same reaction others did….’How did he get that red to look so good?!’ lol Thanks for asking the questions everyone and thanks Todd for answering them. Looks like I might need to start playing with White Balances while shooting.
Hey Kevin, thanks for the comment. Whenever I have an extreme in the color temperature in the original image, I find that going in the opposite direction with WB often helps create more separation and definition. In this case, cooling the image down as much as possible.
whao… These shots are extraordinary. This band is extraordinary…
Actually, they were the first band that I shot (illegaly back then, my huge 400D hidden in a coat…) and that gave me the will to keep on taking pictures of shows…
The 2nd picture (Anders all in red) is probably one of the most amazing pictures I’ve seen because of the amazing colours (I mean only ONE colour)…
Todd, I discovered you work (art) today, and I can’t stop screaming “whaaaaahou” in front of my screen at every pic that I see…
It’s a bit frustrating at the same time, cause you do exactly what I’m dreaming to do…and you’re doing it soooo well.
i’m sorry for my english btw…not perfect yet…
Hi Lauren, thanks very much for the comment, glad to hear you like these shots. I found this a very difficult concert to photograph.
I’m glad you found ishootshows.com and hope you’ll stop by to comment in the future!