Shooting shows

I haven't been to a rock show with my camera in months (quite a drought for me, I've been ill), but I've been thinking about concert photography lately. I've recently come to a realization about what kinds of concert shots I like best and which particular kind I am beginning to find rather stale. This particular decision is probably something that pros might feel is rock show photography 101, but to a rank amateur like me, it's something of a watershed.

So here to the left is a good example of the type of photo I've realized I no longer really like (I'll use photos of mine to illustrate, since I don't want to use others' photos as examples of stuff I don't like (we're all love here at SVD)): a singer, often with a guitar though not always, standing in front of a mic on a stand, in the act of singing. The singer's mouth is always very close to the mic, so much so that the mic is obscuring part of their face. Because the singer is standing singing into a mic on a stand, and often playing a guitar, they're usually not doing much else.

Here (to the right) is another example--from slightly different angle but fundamentally the same deal. There isn't much motion in these, real or implied, and that's precisely why I've taken so many like this: I'm most likely to get a crisp photo and not a fuzzy blur when the singer has paused to deliver a line. That's just practical, but it's also kind of lazy. Sure, in some low-lit clubs, I'm just not going to get much else without a super-fast lens or a camera that goes up to 3200 ISO, but it's not impossible: looking over my Flickr set of rock show photography, I see that even in the darkest club in town I've had some luck.

And what good is a rule (for lack of a better word; in no way do I claim that this is an actual rule) without exceptions? Of course there are great photos of this type, though I'm pretty sure I haven't taken any. I do like this one, though. I also have noticed that I don't have this same distaste for photos of singers actually holding mics, but I suppose that's easily attributable to fact that they're usually doing something interesting with their hands. This is going to sound corny, but like so many things in life, I guess the best path is to keep challenging myself, to keep constantly trying new ways of approaching a situation and not to ever let myself feel like I know what I'm doing. April is a good month for shows here, I can't wait to get started (all over again).