How to photograph DJs

Turning the camera around its axis

On November the 20th, I went as usual to Freedom House to shoot the artists of the night. It was 2 DJs, the main star being Ben Huang, which has been on Shanghai night scene for many years, seconded by Fotocup, one of our local DJs. It was my first time to shoot DJs.

To help other photographers beginning in the field of music bands photography, here is the evolution of my thinking in the eve. You’ll see how a normal shot call look completely ugly and good for the bin, and how to very fast improve it…

I used my Nikon D70 and 2 small flashes, an SB800 with a CTO gel, a transparent strip of orange plastic paper with orange color, and a cheap flash (20 euros) with a blue gel on it, and a remote to have them fire when I press the release button on my camera. I had 2 lenses, 50mm f1.4, and 24-120mm f3.5-5.6 . I need at least 24mm to get a wide scene view. 50mm is for close shots in low light (no flash). I shoot in Raw.

The photos I use as examples are one-press-of-a-button converted jpgs from raw shots in Acdsee, so they look mediocre compared to the originals.

1) First shot is straight forward, with just my SB800. That’s how it looks when someone takes a shot with a point and shoot camera.

Ugly straight shot

I learnt that the environment was ugly, the bar lights were dim, and my flash was taking ambient light away from the wall where some video was being projected. I also noticed that light shined nicely on the metal of the DJ’s table feet…

2) I changed my point of view, still ugly, but better composition for later…

Better angle...

For those shots, I was already shooting in low speed, 1/6s, to see if the scene lights would come out. I was disappointed… As my SB800 was pointed to the DJ’s face, I didn’t worry about him being blurred out: the flash will freeze him, but the rest of the photo will blur out because of low speed, which is cool for that kind of photography.

I thought that my iso of 400 was too low to get the scene lights come out. I changed it to 1000 iso, which is not that good for a camera like the D70, because of all the noise I’ll get in dark areas, but fine with a D90, or even better, with a D700 (which I couldn’t borrow that day…). The D700 can go up to 2000 ISO without any real noise problem!
Well, I would get noise, but I know how to deal with a part of it in photoshop, and make it look artistic…

3) I turned off my SB800, deciding to work with no main light for my subject. I wanted to see if I could get the nice green laser… ISO is 1000, remember, and my aperture is 1.4 with my 50mm lens. Not too hard to have the DJ Fotocup in focus, because he is quite still. A bit of blur on him, again, looks cool. The green beams looked fine, but light on the DJ would vary a lot, according to the light projected randomly at him by the dim spots.

Green beams of light

4) I turned on my other strobe with the blue gel, to light the DJ board. That angle was nice, the desk only needed some lighting (or be completely black!).  So I just put my strobe on the stage floor in front of the DJ, pointing its nose to the table.

Blue light under the DJ's turntable...

I also took a photo of the DJ’s turntable to check the angle and the colors; for sure it can look good if I use the right technique…

Turntable angle

The improvment from 1)  to 4)  is already huge, don’t you think so? Well, let’s do much better now!

5) I will use my 2 strobes in the final setting, one for the DJ, one for under the table with the blue gel, otherwise it’ll be all dark and a waste of space. Speed will be between 1/4s and 2 seconds, but really, most of the time, it’s 1 second, so to make special light painting effects. 1/4s , 1/8s are speeds for « clean shots », as it’s nice to have a variety. ISO stays at 1000, because even at low speed, lights are really dim. Aperture is around 4.5 or 5.6, because with all that blur around, and me doing crazy effects, I want our DJ in quite good focus, so he still attracts the eye.

This is how it looks with just the blue gel-ed strobe on the ground. I was also unlucky that the lights and video were off for a fraction when I did my test shot:

With just the blue gel-ed ground speedlight!

This is with a friend holding my SB800 from the side, aiming at the DJ’s face (you can see the light of it on the right side), at 1/8s. It is what I call  a « clean shot » :

Clean shot with my two strobes

6) Now the fun begins! I play around at a speed of 1s. I do several possible effects, by just moving my camera different ways. As my strobes will flash in rear curtain, I’ll get a dim image of the DJ at the beginning, because of the low natural light, and a clear one at the end of the 1 second, with my strobes’ light.

I drag camera in all kinds of directions, sometimes far away, sometimes closer, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly, sometimes coming back, sometimes not. Each time it makes a different effect. Just be careful not to get your DJ out of the picture at the end of the shot, when the speedlight flashes (click on the photos to see a bigger version) :

Camera drag from center to left

I zoom in from far, or zoom out from close, to get strays of light (photo below). Maybe you noticed, you get « clones » of your DJ, heads in heads if he is the center of the focus (in a zoom), or one behind the other ones (if you drag to the sides). An idea could be to zoom in while dragging to the sides.

Er... not sure if I zoomed in or out... oops...

I turn my camera around its axis (the lens), counterclockwise, to create a circle of strays around the center, which of course, is the DJ. In that case, he stays clear, while everything else changes shape. No rules for directions, or speed. Just keep in mind that you have one second to finish your composition (my shutter speed here), or less/more according to the shutter speed you choose:

Turning the camera around its axis

You’ll find more of those DJ photos in my photoblog…

I hope it inspired you, and that you learnt a few tricks! If you have any questions related to the topic, don’t hesitate to post a message here 🙂