Photos: Common

Hip hop is probably one of the more challenging genres of music to photograph. With often animated stage presences, quick movements, and mic-in-the-face performances for many rappers, clean shots are no easy matter. Common’s performance in downtown St. Louis was no exception.

Thankfully, the production had some nice lighting effects, so together with Common’s command of the stage, this show produced some great opportunities for image making.

Photographer’s Notes:

I’d photographed Common once before, so I wore my sneakers for this show. Common worked the length of the stage, which meant a nice workout sprinting to keep up.

Cameras Used:

• Nikon D3
• Nikon D700

Lenses Used:

• Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8
• Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8

You might notice the lead image from this set, which was featured in my review of the new Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II. And for this photo set, the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 was the hero of the event.

The telephoto allowed me to take a step back, run a little less, and still nail up close and personal shots of Common. With the challenges of making clean shots not dominated by a microphone over Common’s face, the less acute shooting angle made possible by the 70-200mm produced a more flattering perspective, too.

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 Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 4:06 pm and is filed under Music Photography and tagged with common, hip hop, live, music, music photography, outdoors, performance, rap, rapper, singer, stage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.