flashback

I shot my first concert ever on 1. May 2006 in Zurich. It was a free concert organized on Helvetiaplatz. I still had my D50 then and absolutely no clue about any concert photography. So I just did everything intuitively :) See more photos from that concert here. It was so much fun and I knew that this is my thing. It took a long time though to shoot my next concert, which was already a small festival: the Burgdorfer Rocknight.

This was shot in the Burgdorfer Rocknight on 19 November 2006. My first real gig shooting ever. With a photo pass, you know ;) This occasion was immensely important to me since that's how I got to know one of my dearest friends, Patrick, who was one of the promoters and masterminds of Rocknight. I considered him arrogant at that time - how wrong I was! That way I also got to know the whole Bleak Origin band and the other members became my dear friends as well.

In that photo Roland of Deadsoul Tribe shows off with his dreadlocks. I'm still quite satisfied with this shot though I'd prolly try and compose it otherwise now. You shoot, you learn :) I'll never forget the excitement and passion that was glowing inside me. I knew I wanted to do concert shooting, I wanted it so badly. After this Rocknight I knew it was my true passion, one of the few things I was able to concentrate on over a longer time and where I had true ambitions.

Here's another shot from that night. It's Rollz of Deadsoul Tribe. He had been injured earlier and was sitting on a chair during part of the show. The yellow light and the smoke create a pretty intense atmosphere here although there is nothing much happening in the picture as such.


In the Burgdorfer Rocknight I also got the first bitter lesson about the difficulty of getting decent shots of drummers and developing a certain kind of love and hate-relationship to the light engineers... ;) This was the best I could do that night and I must say it hasn't become much easier ever since if you have to shoot the whole gig from the pit or first row and have no chance to climb on stage:
That's Niko of Dark Suns.

Have a look at the whole Rocknight set on my flickr account or on the Rocknight 2006 gallery.

Cheers,
Ilona