Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of a crop sensor camera with a 50 millimeter prime lens waiting to get to your first concert. When you need to concert photography, it can all be a bit overwhelming. Which clubs and concerts should I choose? What about my camera settings? Will I be allowed to be in front of the stage for the whole concert? Do I need a flash?

Or should I ask the band beforehand? That's normal. And I think every Novus concert photographer was nervous when they started out. So let's do this together. Follow the next steps and you will be able to get your first awesome concert. But be careful.

Once you start doing this crazy job. You will easily get it to it, just a small warning, starting small clubs. The first advice to start out with is to start taking photos of concerts in small, local clubs. At these venues, you can almost always get in with a DSLR camera without any limitations. For larger venues, you will need to press accreditation. But don't worry too much about this right now.

And I will talk about this in the next lectures. Starting in small venues is the best way for you to get some experience as a concert photographer. In my opinion, it's also the only route when you're starting out learning all the basics that will help you nail the shots when you get to shoot the big rock stars later on. This photo shoots to Norwegian bent, making marks playing in a small club here in Vienna. And it took this photo outside of the venue to get an interesting angle of view. Check out which clubs allow you to get in with the camera equipment first.

Go to the concert at these clubs beforehand. If there are security guards at the entrance, and they check your bags, then you obviously can't just arrive and start taking photos with a digital SLR camera. Almost all venues allow small pocket cameras, but you want to become a concert photographer right? So your first step is to make sure there are no restrictions and taking photos in a club. Once you've found suitable venues, you want to search for cool concerts. The best way is to check out the following sources.

Club or venue homepages, local newspapers, local blogs, magazines, event web pages or print music magazines. Once you found the concert you'd like to attend, buy a ticket. Believe me, it doesn't matter where you live. That will always be a club with some bands playing before you head to your first concert. Here are five tips I always use to make sure my equipment is working properly. And don't forget any gear I need at the concert.

First, make sure your batteries inserted into your camera and it's fully charged. Second, make sure you have your memory card correctly inserted into your camera. Third, format your memory card, go to the camera menu and format your memory card first, it's happened to me more than once that I was shooting with the half full memory card. What will happen is that you'll start shooting the constant after one song realize that your memory card is already full. You won't have the time to delete your old photos manually then, so make sure you start with the freshly formatted memory card. Then before I leave for a photo shoot, I grabbed my camera with the lens attached and shoot one to two frames of anything.

This will ensure that everything's working properly and you can Double check if the battery and memory card are working too. And never forget to pack ear protection in your bag. Once you've checked your equipment, you're good to go. Okay, let's move to the venue. Make sure you're there on time. being late to your first concert can give you a nervous breakdown.

If you have to push through to the first row and fiddle around with the camera settings. Once the band is already halfway through the set, not good. If it happens and the club is already crowded, when you enter from the back, being extremely friendly is the only way to go. Once you arrive in front of the stage, make it clear that you will just be there for a couple of songs. Sometimes people can react badly if you push past them or block their way. So to avoid these situations, be there at least one to two hours before the show.

If you recognize the band either whilst you're doing the sound check Hanging around in the club. Ask them politely. If they mind you taking photos of them tonight, most of the bands will be glad that there's someone who's thrilled with the music and will see it as an honor to be photographed by you. Position yourself to the left or right off center in front of the stage. If you stay that center two microphones stand can block the seniors face, which will make it much harder to capture a good photo and respect other people who also want to enjoy the band and have paid for the concert. Then the concert starts all of a sudden the clap lights go out.

The only light is coming from some blue red spotlights flickering away. The band enters the stage and a wall of sound smashes into your face. You grab your camera with the 50 millimeter 1.8 lens set the camera to automatic mode and bam. A little flash monster sitting on top of your camera pops up and throws the ugliest light you can think of onto the seniors face. Not only is the poor guy half blinded and irritated, but your photos will also look like. At this point, a lot of frustrated beginners just take the cameras home and never shoot the concert again, but not you.

So what's going on? Let me explain the situation in small club and by starting out as a concert photographer it's a lot harder than shooting director chili peppers on a big stadium stage. To be honest, shooting small clubs is tough. You don't have dedicated workspace also called the photo pit. The stage lighting is often the most challenging you'll ever get into crowds dancing around you doesn't make it any easier to get awesome shots of the artist on stage. However, the good news is that it gets easier as you work your way up as a concert photographer.

Having to deal with challenging conditions straight away will definitely make you better concert photographer. Most of the concert I started out with only had a blue and red spotlight on stage, which by the way, the worst colors for digital sensors to handle as shown in the previous scenario. Putting your camera into automatic mode means it will be guaranteed to fire it's pop up flash, because it's too dark. So you have to suppress the flash, chances are your photo will be blurred because the camera can deal with low light conditions when using the automatic setting. A camera in automatic mode doesn't know what kind of photo you want to take and tries to figure out the best settings for you. You have no control of aperture, shutter speed, or ISO.

So you're slave to your equipment. As we want to be cool rock star photographers, we have to let the camera know what it should do. You want to get awesome concert shots and not the ones you will find in the school newspaper. So hopefully you have learned your lesson and you'll never use your automatic mode again. Getting back to the light. You will notice that there is no fancy lighting equipment.

Stage. This small clubs often have their own lighting technicians who aren't familiar with the artists music, so don't expect some freaking awesome lighting effects matching the band's sound. You will also notice that the lighting is mostly colored, purple, yellow, red and blue. All these beautiful colors get smashed onto the blurred musicians in your photo is awesome, if you like the artsy side of photography, but that's not my and hopefully not your style. So how can you take better photos than the other photographers who all have two cameras set to automatic? Let's move on to the next lecture.