Shooting Live Music

Concerts can be a challenge to photograph, but they rejuvenate my creative spirit

When I run face first into a creative wall, I turn to music, especially live music. It rejuvenates my soul.

In most cases, media photographers can only shoot only the first two to three songs of a concert, giving you no more than 10 to 15 minutes to capture a series of images that tell the story of the show. Each venue — dingy club to listening room to huge amphitheatre — is different. Lighting is often a challenge depending on where you’re stationed — in the pit if there is one, on the sides, in the back — and you can’t use a flash because it disturbs both the performers and the audience.

I love that challenge — limited time to produce with a set of unknown variables. The same applies to taking dance and theater photos. In every case, these events remind me of my early newspaper career, when you rarely knew at the start of the day what story you’d be telling or the obstacles you would face in telling it. The hard and fast deadline was a depth charge of adrenaline.

After 40 years of writing and more than a decade of taking photos, it’s a charge I recognize that I need because it fuels me in a creative way.

Photography and writing, like other creative outlets, are like playing golf. Once in a blue moon, you’ll make — or in my case, take — a great shot. But you never have a perfect game; there’s always room for improvement.

On the Road Again

Over the past five years, I’ve shot photos of more than 100 musicians and bands, mostly for Americana Highways. It is a loose-knit arrangement; most assignments are bands I want to see and the website wants to cover. Because I’m a freelancer, I don’t have to take on gigs when I’m on deadline for another writing or photography assignment.

I started working with AH in 2018, then took time off from capturing live performances — you know why — from March 2020 to July 2021. It took a Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit show — vaccinations and masks required — at the Wolf Trap National Park for the Performing Arts to get me back on a semi-regular schedule.

The shooting was steady and travel was plentiful over the next 14 months. I took photos and wrote stories on ShoalsFest in Alabama, at a Los Lobos concert in Austin, at a John Hiatt/Jerry Douglas Band show at Nashville’s famed Ryman Auditorium. Jill and I went to see an Isbell show at the equally Red Rocks Amphitheatre last May.

But after a Reckless Kelly show last September, things slowed down. Life stuff — and other paying gigs — got in the way.

Live music slows down quite a bit starting in the last two weeks of December and doesn’t really pick up in force again until the spring. Between that slowdown and some of the other things in life, I went months without shooting a single concert.

When March rolled around, I knew that had to stop.

This month, I’ve gotten back on the road again, shooting the recording of a live album by the Richmond-based Last Real Circus, following the crew and bands at a taping of NPR’s Mountain Stage in Charleston, W.Va., and photographing a show by the Band of Heathens in New York City this past Monday.

Simple Things

You can see a show review and more photos of the Band of Heathens show by clicking on the link above. I’m still working on stories on the Last Real Circus album and the Mountain Stage experience, but thought I’d share some of those photos as well. And, as a bonus, I’m sharing photos from a dance performance — Metropolitan School of the Arts’ “Company Project” — that I also shot this month.

I hope you enjoy them. Please let me know the ones you like. Ask me questions in the comments and I’ll be happy to answer them.

The Last Real Circus — March 3, 2023 in Richmond, Va.

Company Project — March 12, 2023 in Annandale, Va.

Mountain Stage taping — March 19, 2023 in Charleston, W. Va.

Band of Heathens — March 27, 2023 in New York City