Common + N.E.R.D - Boston, MA (Oct. 1, 2008)

Greetings all,

Had the pleasure of photographing Common and N.E.R.D. in Boston last week. Fantastic show. Great light. Would have been just about perfect shooting conditions if there were a photo pit and they hadn't run around stage quite so much. Thanks for checkin'!

Common
1.

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#4 is cool

nice shots, looked like a cool show.

very nice set...3-5 and 7 are really nice. where'd you shoot #3 from, a side balcony?

shooting from the aisles is a PITA, isn't it?

Good set.
I like #4.
Audience shot is nice as well.

These are wonderful. I really like them. Some of my favorite shots I have seen here in a while.

Thanks everyone (thusfar) for the kind words. It's fun to share from a show whose lighting matched the level of the performance. A rare thing here in Boston.

Tim - yeah, those aisles are pretty constricting. I had a handful of new friends by night's end! And yes, #3 was shot from the balcony, stage right. The security up front pointed me to a stairway near the stage right aisle that provided easy balcony access. Very useful for some quick shots from above.

Great pictures, and Great Artists

Great Artists. I have seen N*E*R*D twice, once at The Glow in the Dark tour and once at a small venue in Knoxville...they put on a great show!

1, 2 & 3 just RAWK!

Great stuff. Will go through the rest later.

What kind of settings are you using for such good shot's?

Thanks all for the kind comments. I appreciate them.

TylerOxendine wrote in post #6499424
What kind of settings are you using for such good shot's?

I credit the lighting for the quality of these shots. I don't really do anything revolutionary when I shoot. As far as settings, here's a brief rundown.

1. I shot this show with the Canon 20d and 5d, using the 17-40, 28-70, 70-200.

2. I always shoot in manual mode. I usually start with ISO1600, f2.8/4 (for zooms, f1.8-f2.0 for primes), 1/160.

3. If the lighting is great (a rarity in Boston), I'll move the ISO down to 800. Mostly though, I'll control exposure by upping shutter speed. This came in particularly handy for this show, since the performers were all over the stage, moving quickly. So I moved the shutter speed to 1/200 and snapped away.

That's pretty much it. When post-processing, I'll open in Adobe Bridge, bump up the black level in CS3, make sure highlights aren't blown out, do lots of dodging and burning (using a soft-light layer) and color correction with selective color layers.

I hope that made sense and was somewhat helpful. If you have any other questions, feel free to ask away, or pm me.

Josh