July 24, 2009 – One image of Brandon Boyd of Incubus. If you think this shot looks like flash, you’re right – Brandon here is lit almost entirely by flash. But it wasn’t mine.
The Setup
After the fifth song (we shot songs four, five, and six), Brandon Boyd came to the edge of the stage and perched for about a minute on an ego riser. The stage lights were very low and washed the stage in a deep blue.
Naturally, the fans at the front of the stage were excited about this close-up opportunity, since Boyd had been back behind the risers that flanked his mic stand for start of the show. Orange focus-assist lights started beaming onto Boyd and flashes started popping. I spun the dials down and hoped for one of my favorite moments of serendipity: catchflash.
Surprise: It’s Catchflash
Catchflash is an instance in which someone else’s flash goes off while your shutter is open and that light illuminates part of your frame. The best part about catchflash is that it can create compelling, off-axis lighting and one of a kind images. The downside is that it can take a little planning to capture; it always takes a lot of luck.
The Technical Details
For this shot, I estimated that I’d need a very, very slow shutter speed. The stage lighting was so low that what you see in the deep blues and purples is a leisurely 1/5 second exposure, which at f/3.2 and ISO 1000 was perfect to balance the catchflash and stage lighting.
Stay tuned for the full set from Incubus, as well as a full post on catchflash with examples and other techniques for maximizing your chances of nailing it. In the meantime, if you want to link up examples of catchflash that you have, go for it.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 28th, 2009 at 8:27 am and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with brandon boyd, catchflash, flash, incubus, Music Photography, nikon, photographer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Welcome to ishootshows.com, your source for music photography featuring daily concert coverage, portrait features, and photo advice from professional music photographer Todd Owyoung.
Support this site by purchasing your photo equipment through my affiliate links to B&H Photo Video or Amazon.com
Learn more about how you can support the features of ishootshows.com.
Shooting Caitlin Rose and band before the Old 97s was a fantastic warm up, and a nice way to dust of…
Here’s a little preview from a recent shoot with my friends Option Control toward the end of l…
Today Adobe has released the beta version of Lightroom4, the successor to their popular image manage…
You’ve seen it before – weird, colored blobs in your photographs radiating outward from some…
About that time when I said about the megapixel war being over with the release of the Nikon D4 and …
Hehe, nice one. Like that too, got some pictures from Death Feast with a little help from fellow photographers going wild with their flash units in the pit ;)
I love some good catchflash. And yes, you can get some nice effects from other photographers who are blasting away, too.
I always try to catch the other flashes. As soon as i see a orange afbeam my shutter starts to shot hoping to catch it. But there is a lot of luck involved.
It turned out interesting, great!
Hey Kristian, thanks. The orange AF assist light is a nice indicator to go by and does help with timing. When the flashes start popping, simply shooting a lot of frames is going to help immensely, too.
thanks for this article. I was at a show on sunday and there were tons of younger girls who were taking as many photos of nick santino as possible, so there were a lot of flashes going off. I wasn’t really sure how to go about catchflash, so this article was very helpful.
:)
Hey Amanda,
Just like any flash photography, you want to balance the stage lighting and the flash. The trick is that you don’t know and can’t control the power of the flash, so you have to guess on the flash exposure. Also, this technique always benefits from a long shutter – one just has to balance the effect of the stage lighting on the subject.
Great idea. Perhaps I will rethink my long-standing policy of beating the tar out of anyone who leaves their flash turned on at a concert….
;-)
Hey Clayton, thanks for the comment. Maybe next time you see the fans snapping away and flash bulbs popping, you’ll have a change of heart. Me? I’m a flash lover now.
Catchflash: How fans and their P&S cameras become your wireless flash accessories for serendipitous concert photography http://bit.ly/UV60D
RT @toddowyoung Preview: Incubus | ishootshows.com http://bit.ly/UV60D
a catchflash!
you are a lucky guy man :)
regards from Argentina
A little lucky, and with luck that was enabled with just a little planning and a bit of guessing thrown in for good measure! Thanks for the comment.
Love getting a catchflash shot….
Well done on actually planning around it though, thinking on your toes…I definitely would not have thought about going for the longer exposure to compensate the background lighting – my natural instinct would have been BURSTPOWER
Hey Dan,
Nice to hear from you, thanks for the comment. Catchflash is one of my favorite things to see during a show. Any shutter speed below one’s camera’s flash sync speed will work, I think, but the slower shutter speeds do help with timing. In addition to a slow shutter, bursting does help, too.
You take some of the coolest pictures I’ve ever seen!!
Thanks, Tabitha!
Preview: Incubus | ishootshows.com: Catchflash is an instance in which someone else’s flash goes off while y.. http://bit.ly/16mglo
[...] at the mic. These ego risers didn’t see too much use during the show that I photographed, but Boyd did sit on them between the second and third songs, which put him at his closest to the photo [...]
How’d you find out the exposure of the shadows were 1/5?
The exposure was an educated guess. I made a few test shots and adjusted the exposure accordingly based on how I thought flash would balance with the stage lighting.
I understand that, but the shot was still at a high shutter speed, correct? You weren’t handholding at 1/5?
No, the exposure on the shot is actually 1/5 second. I was handholding at that speed.