Hi I'm a beginning concert photographer. I have shot plenty and have had luck with most concerts, but in the case where the light really sucks, can someone PLEASE please tell me what to do? I know it's against the rules to use a flash, but I just found myself in a very messed up situation.
For one, it was a Snoop Dog concert, so plenty of people were in there smoking weed. So smoke of course messed up a lot, then they had this bright yellowish green light shining on the stage. No spotlight whatsoever!
I came home to a bunch of useless photos (in my opinion). I did shoot a bunch of them in raw so that I could toy with the output, but I haven't had much luck. Can someone please suggest a work flow for this or tell me what area in Lightroom I should be focused on?
Ming Thein has an excellent article currently on his website about this subject - almost all of his stuff is very good and this is well worth a read (in my opinion as I do sometimes shoot such events).
That's an excellent article; thanks for the reference. As to the OP's question, I don't think these are useless at all. Are all of them keepers? Probably not, but the light is what the light is. The only comment I would offer is to try to figure out what the baseline color temperature is, and correct somewhat for that. They're colored lights, so you don't want to get rid of the color, but each light source (e.g. tungsten) has a color temperature which is generally imperceptible to the human eye under normal conditions, and which can (usually) be corrected. The goal would be to attempt to replicate the color of your images to what your eye saw in the venue. In this case, I think you might want to adjust the tint slider a bit to the magenta. Green will still be green and yellow will still be yellow, but Snoop's face might come a bit closer to what your eye saw. Bottom line for me is that "content is key", and light color is secondary. So keep the shots with the best composition and exposure, and tweak the color a bit to taste. If that fails, convert to black and white.
Recently I shot a crazy light show with a group called Gong. No front lighting - only a projector with random images on the band and wild (seriously wild), moving strobes and coloured flashing lights, together with LOTS of smoke. Shooting at 3 fps I could get 3 different lighting looks in a second.
Set a base colour temp, manual exposure and adjust in LR... lots if needed. Clarity can be your friend if localised and is great on smoke.
None of the shots are useless because of the lighting or the smoke. If you stay in this niche you’ll be happy with half of this light in some venues,.
If they throw green light on the performer, things will look green.
I’m a LR hack but I usually get the image that I’m after (and the possibility of converting to b/w when needed should be taken seriously).
My first LR step is to look at the “Enable Profile Corrections” and “Remove Chromatic Aberration” under “Lens Corrections.” Some users have this set automatically on import, but Profile Corrections might look better one way or the other for our kind of work.
Next I look at “Profile” under “Camera Calibration.” LR defaults to Adobe Standard but I often use Camera Neutral or Camera Flat depending on the body. Again, lots of users have a default set on import other than Adobe Standard, but we’re not shooting landscapes.
Then I’ll look at the WB. Usually we’ve got to deal with lights of different colors at different angles. What is a “natural” skin tone when there is blue and magenta (and yellow and green) lighting? But, it’s worth sampling a neutral area, if one exists, or hitting the Auto button under WB just to see which direction Adobe thinks that things should go. Then I’ll slide around in those areas to find something that pleases me.
One thing to look at is the use of the Radial Filter, both inverted and regular. Temp and tint can be changed there. Same for the Adjustment Brush which also offers Color effect (below Defringe).
Use the Targeted Adjustment Tool under HSL. I use Luminance probably a little more than Saturation, and Hue the least, but occasionally.
And sometimes, if you can’t “correct” it, exaggerate it.
I want to thank you guys for taking out the time to help me Especially you Denny! I've messed around with areas of LR I have never used before. I can't believe how much power this program has! I was able to change a whole lot. I'll show a few before and afters later. Thank you so much!
Especially you Denny! I've messed around with areas of LR I have never used before. I can't believe how much power this program has! I was able to change a whole lot. I'll show a few before and afters later. Thank you so much!