Prong, Jag Panzer, Opeth – Rock Hard Festival 2009

Posted by at 2. Juli 2009 | Category Festival, Live, Photography, Pictures

Opeth

There were six Bands playing on the first festivalday, but do to the fact, that it was a long weekend in Germany lots of People were on the road and made me miss the first two in the morning, even though I started out at home almost with two hours until the Festival began and a 45 Minute drive ahead. Next to that, there was a bit of trouble at the entrance, which led to me missing the third Band as well… that’s live, I couldn’t do much about it afterwards anyway, so I focused on getting the other Bands done right that day.

First of, it was time for Prong onstage. I new the Band by name and had heard a couple of there songs online, but I’ve never been into them until then. The guys really blew me away, with an absolute awesome sound and an enormous energy on stage.

Next up was Jap Panzer, which turned out to be just another ordinary PowerMetal Band, but at least they were posing like maniacs and it was fun to shoot, even though the music wasn’t really for me.

Then the Highlight of the Evening came along. I was excited all week long to finally see Opeth with a playing time over one hour, after I missed them as they played in the area.  There last release was simply a masterpiece and I can advice everybody to check out ‚Watershed‘. Unfortunatly the high expectations I got where disappointed do to a really bad sound… a problem that occured a lot during the weekend.

Shooting Notes

Shooting the first two Bands was acctually pretty laid back. The Stage was pretty low and so it was easy to get a nice angle on the artists. Even though it was bright daylight outside, under the roof of the Tentstage it was not the brightest, so I bumped the ISO up between 200-400 to get a fast shutter speed  between 300-400 and deal with the fast moving subjects. In the evening it got a little worse, because this year there wasn’t one tracer aimed at the stage and the light overall was pretty „moody“,  so I had to bump the ISO up to 800-1250 to get a good eposure.

I switched lenses a lot during the shoots and worked mostly with the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 and the Canon 24-70 f/2.8. I also pulled out the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 a couple of times to get some close-ups, but most of the time that lens just was to long on the 40D.

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