There's a First Time For Everything

It was the first time I was going to be attending a concert as a concert photographer. I had a great camera, a nice big SD card for the camera, my phone (thank goodness!) as backup, and my media pass stuck to my sleeve. The only issue was that I had to buy new batteries for the camera. And a charger, because it takes a specific type of battery. Okay. Not a big deal. Hit Best Buy, hit up Amazon, got four new batteries and two chargers. That should do it. I'll just charge them for a little while before we leave for the concert.

Dammit. The Amazon order didn't come in time. Now I'm down to two batteries and a new charger that I don't have time to figure out. Okay. Hopefully the batteries will last long enough. And I'm sure I can find an outlet somewhere in the venue to get the battery charged if I need to. It'll be fine.

It was not fine. I could not figure out how to get the charger to charge the stupid battery that decided to die in about four minutes. My camera has maybe half a dozen photos from the concert on it. The rest had to be taken with my phone. How professional, I thought.

The good thing about this first time out as a concert photographer is that the band, St. Lucia, is my cousin's band. He's the keyboardist in the photo above. Having an in, meant that there was no pressure on me. I didn't have a deadline to meet and my photos and article would be self published anyway.

I'd already interviewed the lead singer, and founder of the band. So that part was mostly taken care of.

I felt like such a dolt with my camera around my neck, but my phone out to take photos. The looks I got from concert goers made it a little uncomfortable, and some of the other photographers also gave me some funny looks. But everyone starts out somewhere, and this was my start.

Now, it's been about 9 months since that concert, and I've gotten to know my camera and my battery chargers, a lot better. I've played with settings and I am looking forward to my next concert photography experience.

The background story of this photo is most of what I wrote above. It was taken with my iPhone 8, in black and white. The photo is of my cousin, Nick Paul. It's not the clearest or sharpest picture, but the smile on his face, just reminds me so much of how much he loves playing music. Every time his band comes to town, we go see them. My husband's cousin is a concert promoter and is the promoter for this band when they come to town. So if Nick doesn't get us on the list, my husband's cousin does. We've seen them no fewer than six times in three different venues and every time is like the first time. The band has so much energy and the fans have their definite favourites, both in songs and band members.

The next time they come to town, I'll probably get another media pass and I will be able to take proper photos with proper apeture and exposure.

But for this go around, I'm just happy I had my phone with me. Because I got to capture some great memories and great shots, even if they're less than great exposure settings.