Story of the Year

In a hometown show at the Pageant in St. Louis, post-hardcore rockers Story of the Year delivered a highly kinetic set that had the house floor heaving.

Photographer’s Notes:

I’d heard very good things about Story of the Year’s live show, so I was excited to see what these guys could pull off on stage. As their renown suggested, they put on a great live show with tons of energy. Three short songs later and I was already looking forward to the next shoot.

A dozen monitors at the front of the stage limited the shooting angles, but the band made good use of them, playing up on the speakers quite often, which made for some photogenic opportunities.

The lighting for this set was largely backlit, so I supplemented with the use of remote strobes. Lots of red washes with white accent lighting for this concert, which, while it may have suited the music, made for some rough ambient.

I shot this set at ISO 2000 to pick up the stage lighting – shutter speeds were all over the map, with aperture around f/2.8 for the full set.

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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 Sunday, June 28th, 2009 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with 2009, images, live, pageant, photographer, photographs, photos, saint louis, soty, st. louis, story of the year, tour. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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9 Responses to “Story of the Year”

1. Todd Owyoung says:

   June 28, 2009 at 7:53 pm

   Photos of post-hardcore rockers Story of the Year — or, fun with wireless flash photography: http://bit.ly/17jYrJ

   Reply
2. Todd Owyoung says:

   June 29, 2009 at 2:53 am

   Photos of post-hardcore rockers Story of the Year — or, fun with wireless flash photography: http://bit.ly/17jYrJ

   Reply
3. Tricia says:

   June 29, 2009 at 9:55 am

   great shots!!

   Reply
   • Todd says:

     June 29, 2009 at 9:56 am

     Thanks, Tricia.

     Reply
4. Jeff Horton says:

   July 3, 2009 at 8:53 am

   Can you give us more details on your setup of remote strobes? What kind, how many, and where do you place them?

   Reply
   • Todd says:

     July 3, 2009 at 9:01 am

     Hi Jeff,

     I used a couple of Nikon SB-600s as the remotes for this show, and they’re firing via optical triggers. I’m planning on writing a tutorial on the use of flash eventually, but in the meantime, I assure you that there’s nothing tricky at all about the setup.

     Reply
5. Jeff Horton says:

   July 3, 2009 at 9:36 am

   I Googled “SB-600 optical trigger” but didn’t see anything that would educate me. I don’t know a thing about this subject, so please bear with me. It sounds like you’re setting a couple of remote flash units on the edge of the stage and they’re being triggered by the flash mounted on your camera hot shoe. If that’s the case, how do you secure the remote units and do you just trust that no one is going to mess with them?

   Thanks,

   Jeff

   Reply
6. Daniel says:

   July 3, 2009 at 10:49 am

   Hey Todd,

   great set. The 2nd, 7th and 10th are particularly great, to me. I really like the perspective and on the 7th the symmetry gives the shot a whole new feeling.

   Cheers,
   Daniel

   Reply
7. Photos: Story of the Year | ishootshows.com says:

   March 8, 2010 at 6:25 pm

   [...] not to be missed, and these guys certainly did not disappoint. Since I’d used flash at the last show, I was interested in taking a different approach with this show and set: the novel approach of [...]

   Reply