Last year, Maryland Deathfest VII was one of the greatest live music photography experiences I’ve ever had, what with the insanely awesome lineup, all-access, and a multitude of fascinating people to shoot between bands. Needless to say, I was excited to return for this year’s version of the biggest extreme metal festival in the United States; unfortunately, I was only able to make Friday of the three-day affair. Friday is basically a warm-up day, with fewer bands and a less immersive vibe. I took far fewer photos this year as a result - not only were there fewer bands, but for some reason I only had pit access for two songs per band (though I could still shoot for the full set, from outside the pit including backstage and onstage). I also spent most of my time between bands socializing, whereas last year I spent basically every single minute shooting something.

Still, I came away with some decent stuff. The last band to go on, D.R.I., were particularly great to shoot, especially since they were the only band to actually play with the house lights on. Every other band that played inside, I shot at ISO 6400 and the only lighting was deep blue and red (worst case, red only and I either used flash or accepted the redness as part of the ambience); D.R.I. used beautiful white light and I shot at ISO 1600 with generous shutter speeds.

Here are just a couple highlights (in order, D.R.I., Birds of Prey and Coffins); check out the full Flickr set for much more.

I’m particularly fond of that last shot, which is of the moshpit during Gorguts‘ fantastic set; check it out large. And again, there are 70+ more photos at the full photoset. For my 400+ photos from last year’s MDF, I’ve got two galleries up: Saturday and Sunday.

I am pretty pleased with what I managed to get out of two days at Maryland Deathfest back in May. I saw and shot 32 bands (!!!), enjoyed most of them, tripped my shutter probably 4,000 times, ultimately posted 400+ keepers, got a few published in Decibel (see below), took advantage of awesome access to get some relatively unorthodox shots, and escaped it all without so much as a mild headache.

In looking through my favorite shots, it occurs to me than many of them are a bit non-standard. When one shoots 32 bands in a row, the usual live band shots start feeling pretty cookie-cutter and boring. Thankfully, the extremely liberal MDF rules for photographers allowed for a lot of experimentation: flash or no flash; photo pit or stage perspectives; a multitude of opportunities for great fan shots; etc. I tried to make sure I bagged a few “normal” shots of each band, but if I was feeling up for it, I spent some time looking for different things as well.

Sometimes, different things just happened, and it was easy, like the headline photo where Sigh’s Dr. Mikannibal spat fire at the audience to close out the festival. I stupidly didn’t realize what she was about to do even though I’ve seen videos of her doing it at previous shows, so I stayed in place right in front of her instead of moving to get a profile view. Oh well: a side view would have been more illustrative, but the head-on view is arguably more dramatic.

I’m not quite sure I got the hang of shooting from the stage or the side of the stage, especially without flash - balancing the exposure was tricky, especially indoors. But I got some neat things like the above. Outdoors, it was a bit easier, especially at the time of day when the fading sunlight on the crowd was roughly balanced with the lighting on the stage. Then, I could get some wonderful shots like this one, which was one of the ones to appear in Decibel:

That one was taken with a rented 10.5/2.8 fisheye, which brings me to the gear question. For the most part I used my D300 with fisheye attached alongside my D700 with rented 24-70/2.8 (amazing lens, by the way, and likely my next acquisition once I make enough money to pay for it). I got occasional use out of my 80-200/2.8 on both bodies, depending on my needs. On the inside stage I sometimes pulled out the SB-800 flash, and I actually wish I used it a bit more. Inside, when shooting available light I was generally at ISO 6400 on the D700, and I think I could have gotten some more consistently good stuff with more use of flash. Still, it’s way too easy for flash concert photos to all start looking the same after a while, so I’m not all that torn up about it.

Anyway, I won’t even try recapping my highlights here. For that, check this Flickr photoset, or if you’re really brave, go look at the full Saturday and Sunday sets - over 400 shots between them.

Below, my tearsheets from the August issue of Decibel.

I shot 30+ bands and 4 to 5 thousand photos this weekend at Maryland Deathfest. Photos being processed slowly, I have to finish up the wedding photos from a couple weeks ago as well. I’ll post good ones here sporadically, but above is me (in the red shirt) at work in the pit with the vocalist from The Red Chord (black shirt facing the camera). Thanks to Aaron from Return to the Pit for taking and posting this and a gazillion other images in a split second. (Dude wrote a program to automatically process all his images, so unlike me, he posted all his photos the same day he took them. Meanwhile, I’m processing all my RAW files by hand. Hmm.)

There were tons of photogs at the fest, mostly from webzines and fan sites. They cut off press credentials over a month out, so I guess they were granting passes to most of those who asked until they hit their limit. Photogs got both pit and stage access on both festival stages (indoor and outdoor), which was sweet. We were limited to two songs for Bolt Thrower because of excessive amounts of bodies flying, but otherwise, no restrictions. It was a fucking blast and an incredibly well-run festival. More to come.

In the meantime, I posted my first of several posts about MDF at Black Plastic Bag.