Opeth – Summer Breeze Open Air 2009

Daniel — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 15:52:12 +0000

With a bit of delay Opeth started their set this evening. In comparison to a lot of other artists today, all photographers were let into the pit right up from the start and their was no waiting. Well, at least until the show started. After a couple of minutes into the set, something broke down on stage and the Amp/Guitar of Fredrik Åkesson just stopped working completely. Even though he and his tec tried to get everything running again it took about 15 minutes until the show continued. Opeth being the headliner today at least got them in the position to keep on playing and finishing their set even though their regular stagetime was over.

Shooting Notes
Shooting Opeth is a pain in the butt. Most other Bands that played during the evenings got pretty nice light and you were able to get some good shots out of it. With Opeth that was not possible. The Band seemed to enjoy the really moody lightshow and was just backlite, in other words you had to use your flash to get some light into the faces of the Band. Also except for Mister Mikael Åkerfeldt, who had to be at his mic most of the time, the whole Band stayed pretty much in the back of the stage and you had no chance to get them into the frame.
The only thing that was quite nice, at least in my perspective shooting the Band, was when the guitar broke down. The whole stage was bathed in a nice warm light and we had the chance shooting some nice 70s style portraits of Mikael.

Opeth - Summer Breeze Open Air 2009

Prong, Jag Panzer, Opeth – Rock Hard Festival 2009

Daniel — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:58:47 +0000

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.

Prong

Jag Panzer

Opeth

rapturedmind photography » Opeth

Opeth – Summer Breeze Open Air 2009

Prong, Jag Panzer, Opeth – Rock Hard Festival 2009