William Beckett and Michael Guy Chislett of The Academy Is…, photographed outside their tour bus

Warped Tour 2008 marked a really fun, fast-paced assignment for RollingStone.com, with a large number of bands on the punchlist and a lot of hustle to make it all happen. Aside from live coverage, the backstage shoots were a big part of this year’s Warped coverage as we photographed Paramorer, Katy Perry, Anberlin, Jack’s Mannequin, and more.

Locations for most of these images took place in the press room and immediate area, with the exception of The Academy Is…, who invited us onto their tour bus for the interview and shoot.

Here are just a few of the group shots made during the day.

Family Force 5:

Paramore:

Amino:

Greeley Estates:

Forever The Sickest Kids:

Jack’s Mannequin:

Tat:

Set Your Goals:

Anberlin:

Oreska Band:

Cobra Starship:

Katy Perry:

Norma Jean:

The Academy Is…:

Charlotte Sometimes:

Gabe Saporta & Fans:

Shooting Notes:

When I was planning for Warped Tour, I knew backstage shots would be a sizable component of the deliverables, which was an exciting charge for the assignment.

As a whole, all the bands were incredibly nice and open to all suggestions, which made this set a lot of fun to shoot. Naturally, it’s always nice to see a group have fun with a shoot, even if it was literally a matter of seconds.

Lighting:

While I initially thought about bringing only one external flash, I’m very glad that I packed two speedlights for these shoots, which helped immensely in the flexibility on site. Most of these shots came together with about 15-seconds of planning, so being able to work dynamically with Nikon’s wireless flash system was a huge boon.

I shot with one Nikon SB-800 as the commander on-camera and one SB-600 as the remote for the majority of these images.

End Notes:

If you haven’t done so already, check out the live coverage of Warped tour of these acts and more:

Warped Tour: Katy Perry, Paramore, Say Anything, Gym Class Heroes

Warped Tour: Jack’s Mannequin, The Academy Is…, Against Me!, Angels and Airwaves

Once again, I have to thank Bethany, the on-site press coordinator for Warped Tour, as a lot of them would not have been possible without her hard work. She was on top of everything, from setting up shoots, contacting bands, and was generally awesome in making it all happen.

Bethany even went out of her way to suggest bands she thought would be fun to shoot, including Family Force 5, Oreska Band, and others, all of which made for a fun time.

I would have to say that Bethany holds the distinction of being the all-time most bad ass rep out of all the bands, tours, and festivals I have ever shot. If you see her out and about at Warped Tour this year, please give her a high five for me

Facts: Tegan has a labret piercing. Sara loves the stage banter.

In a 20-song set, Canada’s favorite twins delivered a sprawling performance of shining indie rock and wandering anecdotes in their sold-out show at the Pageant.

Starting off with the the triple-threat of fan-favorites “I Know I Know I Know,” “The Con,” and “Walking With A Ghost,” the Quin sisters set the pace for tight set list that evenly balanced material new and old, with fresh reinterpretations for many of the later.

Set list:

I Know I Know I Know
The Con
Walking With a Ghost
Burn Your Life Down
Like O, Like h
Take Me Anywhere
Speak Slow
I Bet It Stung
Are You Ten Years Ago
Call It Off
Where Does the Good Go
Relief Next to Me
Not Tonight
When I Get Up
Fix You Up
Nineteen
Hop a Plane
Back In Your Head

Encore:
So Jealous
Living Room

Photographer’s Notes:

Going in, I basically only had one objective with this set: Get a shot of the Quinn twins in the same frame. Bonus points if the shot includes the guitar necks projecting out at twin-like degrees of similitude. Thanks to a nice pit, this was the easy part.

Tegan and Sara’s very liberal camera policy was evident on the floor, with lots of cameras all around, a stark contrast from the night before. During the first few songs, flashes going off in the audience made for a very high degree of catchflash even at moderate shutter speeds of 1/200.

I shot from in front of the barricade, which, thanks to My Chemical Romance on the previous night, was generously deep. After a streak of other shows with no pit, I wouldn’t have been surprised if I would have had to shoot from the crowd for this show.

Lighting:

Lighting for the first three songs was generally pretty minimal, with warm white light from the front and a mix of deep washes from the back. Blues, magentas, and reds dominated the schemes, with a good amount of haze to fill out the effects.

Exposure & Metering:

I shot mostly between f/1.8 and f/2.8 at ISO 3200, with shutter speeds ranging from 1/100 to 1/200. While I could have shot at ISO 6400 and f/2.8 with zooms, due to the mix of lighting, I knew that these images would benefit from the lower sensitivity.

Lenses & Gear:

In a change from a lot of my recent shows, I shot this show almost entirely with primes, drawing heavily on the Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and 85mm f/1.4.

On the full-frame Nikon D3, the 50mm is once again a “standard” lens with a fairly neutral perspective, balanced in between the wide and telephoto spectrums. I found this lens particularly useful for photographing the two sisters in the same frame.

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As the quiet Swede sits down and begins pluck the first, slow notes, a reverential silence settles over the crowd, and the chapel venue seems entirely perfect.

Over the course of 80-minutes, armed with little more than a guitar and his old soul, singer-songwriter José González delivered an aching acoustic performance at Washington University’s Graham Chapel.

The dimly lit, high-raftered venue could not have have been more fitting for the soft-spoken singer as he wove his calmly insistent music. Framed in stained glass and flanked by the chapel’s pipe organs, González played songs from his critically acclaimed debut Veneer (2003) as well as his sophomore release, In Our Nature (2007).

Personal highlights included González’s rendition of Massive Attack‘s “Teardrop” and his chillingly bare cover of The Knife‘s “Heartbeats.”

Photographer’s Notes:

Every time I pressed the shutter release on the D3, a small pang of guilt shot through my brain.

Compounding the fact that I’m in a place of worship, it’s dead quiet in the chapel aside from the achingly simple music José González is making on stage.

I shot at the front of the low stage, crouching down and trying to shoot as sparingly as possible. I took off my hard-soled dress shoes while shooting to minimize any noise I might make and limited my movements as much as possible.

González’s mic stand cut across from his right, so I chose a position to his left between the chapel stage’s center stairs and the speaker stack house right.

Lighting:

The lighting setup for this shoot was very simple, comprised of four lights in the corners of the stage, which stayed at the same intensity throughout the set and put out a very warm white light. These four lights were all aimed at the center of the stage, where José González sat.

In addition, there was a small light positioned on the stage about three meters in front of González. The fixture’s small barndoors blocked light to the singer’s eyes, so there was roughly a 2-stop difference in the exposure between his face and his hands.

The only change in lighting was the use of the chapel’s down lighting, which provided a very bit of fill at the very end of the shoot. Had these house lights been up the whole time, exposure for the singer would have been a much easier affair.

I talked to one of the techs before the show, expressing interest in the lighting that I’d seen used on the rest of the tour. He told me that they wanted to use other lights, but that the small chapel didn’t have enough juice to power them.

Exposure & Camera Settings:

Due to the very constant lighting, I was able to lock down to one basic exposure: 1/160 and f/2.8 at ISO 6400. This was a compromise between slightly underexposing the face and wildly blowing anything south of the neck.

Lenses & Gear:

I shot with the Nikon D3, using the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR as the primary lens. Due to the positioning, I preferred the range of the telephoto, though I also made use of the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 and Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 for a few one-off images.

The range of the 70-200mm was quite good for my shooting position, though I can see how the added 1.5x multiplier effect of APS would have been convenient for even tighter shots. Still, 200mm was quite nice for headshots.

End Notes:

Go see this man. I’ve seen some great, great stuff shot on this tour, so if you get the super-ambiance lighting, sweet, but the live show is worth seeing regardless.

Living up to their growing renown as the live show to see, Semi Precious Weapons brought their glam rock party to Cicero’s in a raucous set of silver stiletto boots, spin-kicks, titties, and at least one song about Jesus.

The frenetic Brooklyn four-piece seemed perfectly at home on Cicero’s small, low stage, which put them close enough to their fans and each other to foster a fine frenzy only a song into their short set.

Fronted by Justin “Precious” Tranter, the SPW flew through their deput album, We Love You, with a rabid intensity that left the venue’s floor littered with glitter confetti, glass, and a few mouthfuls of Captain and Coke, courtesy of bassist Cole Whittle.

Tranter lorded over the fierce crowd, demanding their money (“We take credit cards!”), their titties (“I need inspiration for my operation!”), and their love – and, to various degrees, his captive audience was willing to oblige, with no limit on the latter.

Highlights from the performance included “Magnetic Baby,” Her Hair Is On Fire,” their eponymous track, and basically anytime Tranter was close enough for the audience to touch.

In the end, all the buzz about Semi Precious Weapons – having been recently voted NYC’s best band by the Village Voice, hooking up with famed producer Tony Visconti, and being managed by BP Fallon – seemed immediately irrelevant in light of the evening’s simple truth:

These boys bring the party, and they bring it hard.

Shooting Notes:

As was told to me a fellow photographer before the show, this band is pure candy, “Like a Babyruth covered in frosting and sprinkles.”

Cicero’s venue is a small, narrow strip of basement that holds several hundred smoking, sweaty show-goers. The place is basically a dungeon.

There is no photo pit, so I packed in early to stake out my spot on the short strip of stage-front real estate. I choose a spot just house-right of the main speaker monitors. Having seem other shots of Justin Tranter, I saw he was right handed and knew to his left would provide the cleanest shots of the singer while also picking up the expressive left hand.

I’d heard reports about the crazy live show, and when I saw bass player Cole Whittle doing stretches before the show on the side stage, I knew things were probably going to get a little nuts.

By the end of the night, Whittle had been pulled around the stage by his hair, spin-kicked his way through an invisible army, stage-dived, and flipped off the audience few dozen times for good measure.

However, in talking to him after the show, the bass player assured me, “I know I may look reckless on stage, but I always try to look out for who has the thousands of dollars worth of camera gear.”

Lighting:

The house lighting at Cicero’s is what one would expect from a venue of its size, consisting primarily of contrasty front lighting and an array of colored lights at the back of the stage.

The front lighting was quite warm in color temperature and came from a small set of lights mounted on the venue’s low ceiling. While the output from the lights was quite sufficient to keep shutter speeds up, given their close proximity to the stage, coverage was spotty, with various dead spots.

As such, I decided to go with a little augmentation to the available light using an external flash fired on a remote sync cord for a little more dimensional effect.

Relative to Justin Tranter centerstage, there was strong, warm front lighting coming from the left, which acted as the key light for many of the shots.

The flash provided fill for most of the images of the frontman, as well as for guitarist Aaron Lee Tasjan. For bassist Cole Whittle, who was house right of the flash, the light source acted as the key light, since he was relatively in shadow with regard to the ambient lighting.

Lenses:For much of the show I used the Tokina 12-24mm f/4, the focal range of which was well suited to the very tight quarters and close proximity of the band members to the front of the stage. The wide angle’s expansive field of view was essential since often the performers were right on top of the audience, and the majority were shot at 12mm.

Supplementing the Tokina with a little range and speed, I also used the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8 for this gig. The 17mm range was generally wide enough for many of the shots, but proved more of a challenge in keeping limbs in the frame, something at which the 12-24mm zoom excelled. Of the images in the final set, 34mm was the longest focal length used.

Exposure:

While I used flash, it acted primarily as fill throughout much of the set, so sensitivities were still kept up between ISO 1000 and 1250 throughout the set. With the Tokina 12-24mm, I shot at the maximum aperture of f/4 between 1/40 and 1/80, while the faster aperture of the Nikon 17-55mm translated into an exposure of f/2.8 and shutter speeds between 1/40 and 1/100.

The flash, a Nikon SB-800 speedlight, was set to TTL mode with a compensation of -2 throughout the set and worked flawlessly with the D2x in producing a nice balance with the ambient lighting.

While I don’t often use flash for concert photography, this setup with the external flash was a great option for this show that still preserved much of the ambience of the small venue.

End Notes:

If you’re going to photograph these guys, preferably in a dive where they’re close enough to spit (and they will), my advice is to pack in between Tranter and Whittle, get in close and wide, and let it fly.

Surprisingly, aside from reeking of cigarettes, my camera gear escaped unscathed from this show. I can’t say the same for the side of my head, which received a little love tap courtesy of Whittle’s foot during his stage dive, but that’s just par for the course with SPW. And, arguably, a small price to pay for being close to so much awesome.

If you’re looking for the fresh jams, head over to the band’s official site and download their debut album We Love You for free:

www.semipreciousweapons.com

Playing to an adoring crowd, Kevin Barnes lead his band Of Montreal through a roaring twenty-song set of psychedelic indie pop at the Pageant. Freed from the precious trappings of their album recordings, the sexed-up live performance delivered a more raucous version of fan favorites while still remaining as pretty as Barnes in eyeliner and fishnets.

With their glam rock swagger, the opening Prince cover songs, “I would Die 4 You” and “Baby I’m A Star,” seemed as natural and effortless to Of Montreal as anything else in their catalogue. From there, the band ripped into the sparkling “Suffer For Fashion,” the lead track on this year’s critically acclaimed Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?.

Of Montreal proceeded to step-kick their way into a setlist that drew primarily from their last three albums, heavy with favorites that spurred cheers from the audience. Highlights included “I Was Never Young,” “Oslo In The Summertime,” “Gronlandic Edit,” “So Begins Our Alabee,” and the shimmering “Heimdalsgate Like A Promethean Curse.”

Shooting Notes:

Arriving at the venue, I was greeted by a very crowded pit, filled with anxious concert-goers ready for the dance party to come. With very minimal security, the house obviously wasn’t expecting trouble from the glittered kids on the floor. In fact, there were only two guards loosely covering the entrances to the photo pit on either side of the stage.

On stage, Of Montreal’s setup included several platforms on which all but frontman Kevin Barnes performed. One negative effect of this setup was that the band members felt more anonymous and detached from one another, which, despite the infectious pop melodies, created a colder and less engaging group dynamic than I’ve seen at previous shows.

The upside, however, was that the ample space allowed Barnes lots of freedom on stage to dance, skip, and generally do his freaky thing.

Unlike other dates on this tour, the theatrics of additional characters on stage was conspicuously absent. The lone exception was the appearance of a trumpeter in a horned viking helmet, who graced the stage briefly early on in the show.

The black-clad mimes present at a few other recent shows on the tour, unfortunately, did not make an appearance, though Barnes’s own flamboyant character was more than enough to engage the audience.

Overcoming the somewhat awkward stage setup, Barnes made several trips to the sides of the stage to reach out to fans, while Jamey Huggins came down off the stage to play perched on the pit’s security barricade.

Aside from Barnes, guitarist Bryan Poole was the most readily accessible member of the band, who had arguable the best lighting of the group with regular backlighting effects.

For this show, I shot for the entirety of the set without interruption.

Lighting:

Lighting for this show was one of the more less dynamic displays I’ve seen for a touring national act, in part due to the set design, which included light features in a series of the raised platforms. These fixures took the form of translucent panels that lit up individually and in patterned groups, providing an inconstant but welcome source of bright white light sporadically throughout the performance.

Aside from the lighting provided by the panels on the risers, the stage received a fairly steady treatment of high frontlighting throughout the set. Contrasting this effect, a rainbow of backlighting shown at intervals during the performance, alternating between ambient accents to full, blown-out brightness, and everywhere in between. In general, the house lighting was dimmest in between songs and when the set lights were on full blast.

While the platform lighting created a great contrast for the crowd, the actual light on the band was kept to a minimum to emphasize the set.

Lenses:

For this shoot, I relied on the Nikon 17-55mm f/2.8, which I used mostly at 30mm and below. The wide end of the zoom was particularly useful for the more active stage antics of frontman Kevin Barnes, who made ample use of the stage locking, popping, and otherwise getting his grove on when not on vocal duties.

When the light levels dropped, I turned to a trio of f/1.4 primes, utilizing the Sigma 30mm, Nikon 50mm, and Nikon 85mm. The Sigma was a useful general lens for the event given its relatively wide field of view, while the 85mm was particularly useful for shots of the rear stage.

The reach of the Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 would have been nice, but the performers on the back riser were generally much more dimly lit, so the speed of the 85mm was essential.

The modest Nikon 50mm f/1.4 came into play for a few snaps of Barnes and crew, balancing between the ambience of the 30mm and the islation of the 85mm.

Exposure:

While the lighting was unremarkable, it was also relatively constant throughout much of the set and with no major surprises. Strobes, thankfully, where no where to be seen, which made exposure an easy affair.

The ISO was locked at ISO 1600 throughout the shoot, other than a few snaps of the crowd at ISO 3200. Shutter speeds were somewhat marginal, due to high frontlighting, ranging between 1/60 and 1/160 second.

End Notes:

As always, you can peep the Flickr for the full set of images from this show:

Of Montreal @ the Pageant — 2007.11.19

In addition, to see images from the three other times I’ve photographed the band, you can hit these Flickr galleries as well:

Of Montreal @ the Gargoyle — 2006.02.25
Of Montreal @ Mississippi Nights — 2006.08.14
Of Montreal @ the Pitchfork Music Festival — 2007.07.14