Bring Me The Horizon @ Taste of Chaos

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March 11, 2009 – There’s one band to go, but from the way the floor is heaving and the front row is screaming, you’d never know it. As the UK’s Bring Me The Horizon lays down the brutality of breakdowns, death growls, and chugging riffs, the thought occurs that they might not know either.

Bring Me The Horizon @ Taste of Chaos -- 2009.03.11

“Pray for Plagues,” Bring Me The Horizon:

Shooting Notes:

This was one of the performances on the Taste of Chaos Tour that I was most looking forward to photographing, and Bring Me The Horizon did not disappoint.

During the performance my friend Dave said, as if stating the number of days in a week, that BMTH always upstages anyone they play with. Unfortunately for Pierce the Veil and Thursdsay, I think he might have been right.

The lighting for this set was overall darker than that for Pierce the Veil, with deeper washes and a generally heavier feel. Frontlighting was almost completely absent and colored backlighting dominated the band’s treatment.

To supplement the stage treatment, I shot this set with a Nikon SB-900 on-camera bounced off the flash’s built-in white card, with the unit at roughly a 45º angle. This was the same setup I used for Pierce the Veil, and it wasn’t until Thursday’s set that I switched to a wireless flash setup.

My exposure for the ambient lighting was between ISO 1600 and 3200 at f/2.8, with a shutter speed hovering around 1/100.

For this performance, I concentrated on singer Oliver Sykes and found that keeping up with the frontman was quite a task in itself. Sykes was prone to erratic movements on stage, but most of his movement was between two clusters of monitors at the front of the stage.

More than anything, the tricky aspect of shooting Sykes was anticipating his lunges forward and down, which provided the best opportunities for close-up shots of the singer.

In tracking him, I stayed with Sykes as much as possible as he went from monitor to monitor at the front of the stage, trying to get into position as he put a foot up on a wedge in anticipation of him leaning in for the real deal

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 Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 4:42 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, bring me the horizon, d3, flash, images, iso 1600, live, Music Photography, nikon, photography, pierce the veil, post-hardcore, screamo, taste of chaos, toc. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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Todd Owyoung says:

March 23, 2009 at 3:46 pm

Bring Me The Horizon, bringing you breakdowns like it’s going out of style: http://is.gd/oCCf

Stellar Spontaneous says:

March 23, 2009 at 4:52 pm

I’m glad they were as hard for you to shoot as they were for me!
No crowd interaction for this set? He was in and out of the pit for all 3 songs in Cardiff…

Todd says:

March 23, 2009 at 9:23 pm

Nah, no crowd interaction. As David points out, there’s a five-foot stage at the Pageant and the barricade was pushed out a fair bit. I think this might have prevented Oli from coming down as much as he seems to have done in Cardiff.

David Mullis says:

March 23, 2009 at 5:12 pm

i think the pageant’s super high stage kept oli from getting to the barricade.

great stuff todd, thanks for the shout out hahah

Todd says:

March 23, 2009 at 9:23 pm

Hey Dave, nice shooting with you. Yeah, it was definitely a fun show, I’m glad I shot this one.

Keith says:

March 23, 2009 at 10:40 pm

Wow…if that video is any indication of how their shows are…taste of chaos fits…thats for sure…

Sweet set…I bet these guys killed it at the Pageant!

Todd says:

March 23, 2009 at 10:46 pm

Hey Keith, thanks for the comment. I would say that video is a pretty good show of BMTH’s live show, only perhaps a bit more jumping around and movement, even. Regardless, it was a fun show, I’d certainly photograph these guys again in the future.

Scott says:

March 24, 2009 at 6:04 am

Been reading along for a couple of months now. I really enjoy the shots and info. You mentioned you switched to wireless flash for this show. How were you positioning the flash? Was it on a stick or sitting on the stage, and TTL or manual?

Todd says:

March 24, 2009 at 9:00 am

Hey Scott,

Thanks for the comment, glad to hear you’ve been reading the site for a while. I talked a little about the placement of the wireless flash in the write-up for Thursday, which you can check out here:

http://ishootshows.com/2009/03/16/thursday-taste-of-chaos/

For that performance, I shot TTL, though I also shoot manual in many instances. The metering just depends on the situation and how variable the scenes are.

Joel says:

March 24, 2009 at 7:25 pm

Hey Todd,

Great work as always. I was wondering how you got the stage lights to look so soft in most of your photos. I haven’t done many concert photos, but I would have thought that they would be somewhat harsher in a photo especially considering their brightness and your proximity to the stage. Do you use a filter? I would also love for you to critique some of my work. I’ve posted my website link.

Thanks! Keep up the great work! Hopefully I’ll be posting some photos of a Third Eye Blind concert soon. They’re coming to my college and I am getting the chance to be the media photographer.

Mike says:

March 31, 2009 at 1:54 am

Just shot Taste of Chaos and experienced the horror first-hand. My hat goes off to you. You’re dead-on about Sykes. Fortunately, the person in charge of the lights tended to turn up the lights whenever he went on one of his thrashing fits so it was a matter of hammer the shutter and keep him in the frame.

Todd says:

March 31, 2009 at 2:33 pm

Hey Mike,

Oli Sykes is a tough target, isn’t he? That’s great that you got a bit more light for this tour when he was going off. For a performer like Sykes, every bit counts.