George Strohl tells the performers' story with his Tamron SP 28-75mm and SP 70-200mm VC lenses.

By Jenn Gidman
Images by George Strohl

George Strohl has seen just about every type of concert there is, from the pyrotechnics of Judas Priest to Taylor Swift's screaming fangirls. "I grew up in the '80s, so I was always a rock/heavy metal kind of guy," says the Central Illinois photographer. "But each event has a different type of energy, and it's exciting to see that in concert, no matter who the artist is."

Until about seven years ago, Strohl mainly photographed his daughter's soccer games, but then he bought a Pentax camera on QVC and started attending local concerts. "I would see really fantastic concert photos and want to know how the photographer took them," he says. "I started researching and followed a local band around for a year or two to get used to the scene and the lights, and to try out different F/2.8 lenses."

He eventually discovered the Tamron SP 28-75mm lens, followed by the SP 70-200mm VC, and knew he had found the perfect pair. "I use the 28-75 on my smaller Pentax, and the 70-200 on the Pentax K-5 II," he says. "Both lenses give me incredible sharpness and that fast maximum F/2.8 aperture necessary to deal with concert lighting conditions, and together they offer the range I need to zoom in for detail shots (e.g., instruments, facial expressions) and back out to capture everything that's going on onstage."

Read on to see how George sets up his shots while the performers are executing their set lists.

Get ready to rock: preparation.
There are many things beyond your control when you're taking concert photos: your location, lighting, what your subjects are going to do and where they'll be doing it. Regarding location, you typically need a pass to get in when you've got camera equipment like this. What usually happens is security lets photographers into an area right up against the stage for two or three songs, then escorts us out. The performers know this, so they're usually really "on" for those first few songs.

Because you're in often in there early, you can survey the lighting landscape and figure out how to work with it ahead of time. During the concert I'll typically use spot-metering, because my camera is fooled by all the different stage lights and other things happening on the stage. I'll also check my histogram pretty often. I'm constantly making a lot of little on-the-fly adjustments once the show starts, so it's never 100 percent perfect, but I usually get pretty close to how I want everything exposed.

I shoot in manual mode and start off at around a 1/250th shutter speed, with an ISO of 800, and then just adjust it from there, depending on the conditions I'm dealing with. Many people don't like to get the colored stage lights in their images and try to get rid of them in post-production, but I think that's part of the whole experience. When you look at my images, I want you to feel like you were there. I keep my white balance on auto and shoot in RAW so that I can go in and adjust all that later.

To keep things extra-sharp, I use back-button focus, a trick that many sports photographers use. Usually you have to press the shutter halfway to get the AF to activate, then press the shutter again to take the picture. Back-button focusing delegates the focusing duties to another button on the back of the camera, so you eliminate the lag between pressing the shutter twice to take the photo; it also helps keep everything steadier when you're dealing with moving subjects. I really work the focusing gears inside these two Tamron lenses, and they've held up great.

Keep an eye out for unusual perspectives or spontaneous expressions.
I'll also Google the artists beforehand to see other images and how other photographers have captured them. I'm typically able to find quite a few, because if a performer is playing a tour that goes to 50 cities, you'll get at least five to 10 photographers taking pictures in each city.

Many of these artists have been doing concerts for a long time, so when they come out, they’re ready for the photographers. While I won't fire off 30 shots at once, I do shoot in continuous mode so I can capture a bunch of expressions in one swoop; I always have to get rid of a few—no one wants to see a performer with a weird expression on her face—but I'll also get a group of really great photos in that same mix. I want to capture the emotion onstage, so when I go through my images later, I pull out the really intense ones I think the artist would like without thinking, "Wow, I look so goofy there."

What it comes down to is seeking out those different angles or compositions that stand out. I'll tilt the camera a lot to get a creative "model-type" angle, for instance. I also try to keep in mind whether the artist would like the photo and say, "That's a really cool picture of me, I've never seen one like that before." The Brad Paisley one in front of himself on the Jumbotron is one of those types of shots—you're getting two Brad Paisleys in one!

Highlight the details.
Of course you want to take pictures of the artists performing, but sometimes it's fun to pull away from their faces and show them plying their craft by zooming in on their hands or some other detail that shows who they are. There's just something so cool about seeing Joan Jett's hands as they play the guitar, or zooming in on a drummer's sticks as he shows off his chops. That's where the 70-200 especially comes in handy: The drummer is usually positioned at the back of the stage, so the 70-200 allows me to zoom in so I can get him in there, too.

Or you might want to take some pictures of the instruments themselves. When you're let in by security before the show starts, the drum sets and guitars are often already set up on stage, waiting for the performers to come on, so that's an ideal time to try to capture those types of images. Using that F/2.8 aperture, you can simply blur out the background and isolate exactly what you want to show off. Because we get more country acts coming round here in Illinois than rock, I've been trying to take a lot more pictures of the performers' cowboy boots.

Another way I like to accentuate details is through black-and-white images. While you normally might think of concerts as big splashes of color and light, sometimes I'll notice the details of a rocker's jacket or the spikes in their hair that would be better served in a black-and-white photo where there's more contrast; your eye is drawn to those intricacies or to the expression on the artist's face rather than a brightly colored background or the stage lights. The photo I took of Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner is the perfect example of that. Your eye is immediately drawn to both his face and his guitar because they're lighter than the rest of the image—then you notice the detail of his jacket, too.

Incorporate the excitement of the audience.
You don't want to simply photograph the performers and gear onstage—if everyone's just taking pictures of Ruben Studdard and not the screaming girls in the crowd, they're not telling the complete story. I like to take a big-picture photo if I can to show the number of people at these events, as well as the closer shots where you can see a child dancing on the stage with the artist or a group of women reaching up to shake the performer's hand.

You can anticipate that kind of photo, too: If you see someone in the audience up front near the stage holding up a sign or a little kid trying to get the artist's attention, you know something might happen that's worth photographing and can just keep an eye on it. These type of crowd photos offer a sense of atmosphere that complements the rest of your images from the concert.

To see more of George Strohl's work, go to http://archive.strohlphotography.com or his concert site at http://archive.strohlphotography.com/gallery-collection/Live-Music/C0000eNbx9sYzGEg.