If you haven't seen @pfunk's band photos post, go check it out now. Great stuff.

Admittedly, his post got me looking at some of my photos of musical events which mostly occurred here in SW Missouri between 2002-2012. As such, I'm motivated to make a post about it.

This thread contains some of my favorites, but feel free to browse through my full collection of over 26,000 photos at my Flickr page, KentFrostPartyPix.

All photos were taken with Canon EOS gear that evolved with me over the course of about 10 years. I think I went through 4 different models of the Rebels, upgrading anytime I found benefits in the new offerings from Canon.

I covered a huge majority of the electronic music events that happened here within that time, spending a lot of time photographing DJ's and party goers with a few bands sprinkled in here and there throughout. In fact I owe a lot of the photographic experience I gained over the years to those environments because I was forced to adapt to the chaotic lighting that was so common at these events.

It taught me how to get creative with flash photography while still being able to capture my subject's environment. It became important to not only show the people, but help promote the venue itself by including it in as many shots of each event that I could. So finding that balance between flash and ambient light was always crucial.

I found that the most dynamic pics typically resulted from not only extending the shutter speed (of course), but also getting the flash away from the lens. To create dynamic, you need shadows. And when that flash is located right next to the camera's lens, it all comes right back at it, giving you the incredibly flat lighting (and RED EYE) we all think of in typical snapshots. So to eliminate that problem, I got a cable that connects my flash to my camera (later I upgraded to a wireless solution), giving me about a 4-ft reach where I could shoot with one hand while using the other to get the flash as far away from the camera as I could to create cross-lighting.

Like this:

POW!

^{Photo of me by Chet Smith}

The four DJ portraits below are prime examples of the results of this technique.

It was also very important at these events to photograph not only performers, but of course the venue and party goers as well.

And of course, you can't forget to get the good close-up shots of the performer performing their craft.

I'll just end this post with a handful of my favorite images from several events over the years.

If you got this far, THANK YOU!!

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