Concert photography critique?

[peetyvulture]

Hey guys

I took this at a show I went to and I was wondering what you thought of it, is the black and white good? is the subject to dark on image left? Does this composition work.

Any words of advice would help
Thanks

EXIF:
1/500 sec
f/2.8
ISO:1600
Nikon D90

[BigFuzzy]

Hiya Peety,
I'll answer your specific questions first then add to that.
Yes, black and white can work for many concert shots, though i tend to feel that close ups tend to work best for that as it's more personal whereas (at least for me) further back shots tend to be more contextual and lend me to want to see more of the lighting. By the way, it's a very nice B&w conversion with true whites and blacks.. nice!

I don't find the dark off putting as there's not too much of it. Concert shots tend to have lots of dark backgrounds, even in color.

Composition - to me, this is where this image is most hurt. It's plain smack dab in the middle and you've cut off his legs at an awkward place. To me, there's just nothing exciting about this composition, plus it doesn't help that he's not really doing much. No (not much) emotion in his face, he's not singing, can't tell if he's playing or just standing there. Not much dynamism.

All in all, to me, it's an ok 'been there, saw him' shot, but doesn't blow me away in any way as it's pretty... boring. Feels like he's just standing there. Since you were there, you're likely to have a different emotional connect with this as you know how things really went..but to me, it's a dude just standing there with a guitar not singing or playing looking somewhere unexciting.

But also, I know that it is very difficult to make concert photography interesting.

[justin_ing]

Ditto on all of the above. I think the "dynamism" would have been solved with him singing into the mic.

Concert photography is tough. Its hard to capture "how it feels in that moment".

I tried at a charity show... this took about 30 shots before I could get anything from this performer.