Accidental Concert Photography - looking back at my first set on a DSLR

[DigMe]

I chuckle to myself sometimes when I look back to my beginning in photography not that long ago. I got my first DSLR on a Friday and that night I was doing my first bit of concert photography. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't know the settings on my camera but especially that I didn't even know that my camera had a built-in light meter! Nevertheless, I shot these .jpg photos in Manual mode by chimping and feel. All of them are at ISO 1600 it's been almost a year-and-a-half but I believe I didn't do any post-processing on them either or if I did it was real minimal. It's amazing to me that I got anything usable - total blind squirrel finding a nut thing but I've always been pretty pleased with them as the first photos that I shot on my D5000. I would definitely do some things differently today, especially compositionally. I actually shot some of these as low as 1/20 of a second and in some of them it shows. 20,000 shots and 16 months later I don't usually go below 1/60 these days and it's all RAW and then to Lightroom 3.

Enjoy


This one could definitely benefit from some noise reduction.






This one to me looks like it has some noise reduction though I don't recall having any noise reduction software at the time.








I'm tempted to re-edit them sometimes but then I just decide to let them be.

brad

[DigMe]

BTW, the bands pictured here are the now-defunct David Crowder Band, Hillsong London and Israel Houghton.

brad

[blue-october-fan]

i like the second one, because the subject is in really sharp focus, and i like how his face and body are frozen, but his hand must have been moving really fast. I also like the lighting and how well-lit that one is.

[bombsaway]

Great shots, I would believe you if you called yourself a pro then if you didn't give the story behind these pictures.

[DigMe]

Thanks, bombs.

brad

[DiskoJoe]

They look good as is.