This past weekend I was able to shoot hip-hop artist Lecrae’s sold-out concert at House of Blues in Orlando. He’s out on tour supporting his latest album, Anomaly, which debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 when it released in September. Thankfully, I have some friends who have been working with Lecrae and his label, Reach Records, for a while now and were able to hook me up with an all-access pass to cover the show! I figured I would take this opportunity to share some of the shots with you, along with my thought process for covering the show and some post processing tips.
I started the set in the photo pit, the space between the stage and the crowd barricade. The stage at HoB is pretty high, so I always try to start from the sides and shoot tight to get those shots out of the way.
With a high-energy show, which hip-hop tends to be, there’s a lot of movement on stage, so I usually shoot a lot more wide shots than tight. While I still move back and forth in the pit to try and follow the action, shooting wide keeps me from having to move too much. There’s plenty of stuff to trip on in the pit, as well as the other photographers who are all trying to maneuver around each other, so the less back and forth there is, the less chance for bumping into someone.
This is one of my favorite shots from the show because it’s obviously a peak action moment with Lecrae flying high, but then there’s also the subtle background element of his backup singer also getting some air at the same time.
Needless to say, there was a lot of jumping.
Not always though.
There were even some quiet moments, which I took advantage of by getting in nice and close while he was at the edge of the stage.
But then there was more jumping! I liked the black and white edit of this shot more than the color version (below). I feel like not having the blue color of the lights and the red color of the screens intersecting his body below the arms makes it less distracting. Which do you prefer?
B&W PROCESSING TIP: One thing to keep in mind if you’re converting images to black and white in Lightroom or Camera Raw is that the color sliders still matter! Once you convert it to black and white, go back to your white balance sliders and tweak them. You’ll be surprised at how big a difference in light and contrast those adjustments will make.
Don’t stop there either. Head to the HSL sliders and you’ll see color sliders that will help you adjust your black and white mix. Depending on the colors in your photo, some of them might not do much of anything, but the ones that do affect the image will make a huge difference. It’s also a great way to selectively darken/brighten elements in your images.
And if you want more fine-tuning, head to the Camera Calibration sliders and see what you can do with those as well.
COLOR PROCESSING TIP: One thing I try to achieve in my color images is a nice contrast of colors. The main way I achieve this is also with the white balance sliders. Sometimes it’s a big move of the slider, and sometimes it’s the tiniest tweak. But I always try to find that sweet spot where the colors (in the case of the image above, red, blue, and purple) all pop the best. Then I’ll move down to the vibrance slider and see if pumping it up or, surprisingly, pulling back on it helps the image the most. In this case (and most of the shots from this show), dialing it back to -10 or so gave me the look I liked best.
After I was done in the photo pit, I moved up to a room upstairs and to the side of the stage that I had always wanted to shoot from but couldn’t because I didn’t have the access needed for it. This time I did, so up I went.
I only shot from here for a short time because there were already other people in the room, and I asked one of them if I could stand where they were for about 30 seconds just to get a few shots. I shot till I knew I had gotten a few shots with decent light and a good gesture, then moved back out to the main balcony.
From here I was able to get some shots of the whole stage from a different vantage point. And they broke out the lasers! Who doesn’t like lasers?
Apparently everyone loves lasers, because they turned them up to 11 and added a disco ball in as well. Because, well, why not?
While the crowd was blinded by the light (revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night), Lecrae snuck off stage and made his way into the crowd like the rule-breaking rebel he is (note the sign behind him).
I never am sure which shows certain moments better, tight shots like the first one, or wide shots like this one. In the first one, you can clearly see who it is and you have enough people around him that you can tell he’s in the middle of a crowd. But the second one shows the size of the crowd and the excitement of the people closest to him, and gives a bit more context by showing the stage and lights. What do you think?
During the last song of his regular set, my friends and I made our way backstage. Lecrae came off the stage for a short break while the crowd cheered for him to come back out, and I was lucky enough to grab this moment of him getting ready to take the stage for his encore. While it’s not the most exciting moment, it’s one of those things that few people get to see. So being able to capture it and share it with others is exciting for me.
I hope you like the images, that I was able to give a little insight into shooting strategy, and that the post processing tips were helpful! If you have any questions or input, leave a comment and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.
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