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Up and Coming - Bryan Bruchman Bruchman explains how he shoots concerts and how the Flickr community has helped him take better pictures. Article rating: 7.82

After browsing through Bryan Bruchman’s portfolio, it wasn’t surprising to learn he was a musician. By anticipating the movements of the musicians, skillfully framing his compositions, and capturing the feeling of stage lighting, Bruchman’s concert photos do more than communicate the feeling of the performance. They also reveal acute details that most concertgoers miss.

A native of New Jersey, Bruchman has been photographing concerts consistently since 2002. He shoots three or four performances each week, and sometimes he photographs several groups in a single day. He’s also taken publicity photos for several New York-based artists including The Secret Life of Sofia, El Jezel, and The Song Corporation.

In a recent interview, Bruchman, 28, explained how he photographs concerts and how the Flickr community has helped him take better pictures.

Prior to a concert, Bruchman typically gets permission to shoot from the venue, the performer, or the band’s publicist or manager. He usually doesn’t take any pictures during the first three songs of a band’s performance. He uses this time to familiarize himself with the stage lighting, how and where the musicians are moving, and how the audience is reacting to the performance. Naturally, Bruchman always photographs concerts from as close to the stage as he can get. This, he explained, provides him with more options to take close-ups of individual performers.

Movement is an underlying theme among all of Bruchman’s images. He captures the dynamics of the musicians by following and anticipating their actions and expressions. “You really don’t know every move a musician will make,” Bruchman explained, “but you also can’t just shoot and shoot and have something.”

Stage lighting is also essential to Bruchman’s photos, and he utilizes a variety of techniques to capture the mood. If, for example, there is a strobe light onstage, rather than try to time the shot, he activates his Canon Digital Rebel XTi’s continuous shutter setting to take a series of photos with no flash over a period of just a few seconds. “You’ll get some really dark frames and some with the strobe lighting on the entire scene.”

A Place To Bury Strangers @ The Delancey © 2007 Bryan Bruchman

Sometimes Bruchman will close down the aperture and reduce the shutter speed, which enables the strobe to create multiple exposures within a single shot. This technique, he said, helps convey the chaotic nature of a concert.

Though Bruchman takes pictures throughout a performance, he also reviews his work as he shoots so he can adjust his set-up accordingly. “I try to always keep in mind not only what looks good but also what’s going to stand as a picture on its own and will imply the whole scene of the concert.”

Bruchman emphasized the importance of not letting photography get in the way of the performance. He frequently takes breaks throughout a show to watch the musicians. “You need to detach yourself from the lens to get an understanding,” he explained. “If you’re not paying attention to the show and appreciating what the musicians are doing, you’re not going to be able to convey that in your pictures.”

After a concert, Bruchman combines all of the group shots and organizes the individual shots by performer. By carefully comparing similar shots, he determines which images he will keep. He tends to publish his work just as he captured it and rarely edits his images with software.

Tim Williams @ Southpaw © 2007 Bryan Bruchman

Bruchman uses Flickr.com to network with other music photographers. He posts collections of his images on the site, and he frequently leaves comments on other photographers’ pages or emails them about their work. The “real beauty of Flickr is the community,” he explained, because you get “instant feedback from other photographers.”

“Flickr definitely helps you learn how the system works, how people coordinate, and how they shoot,” he said. “You see someone at a show and then you can see their results on Flickr. It can be very humbling. It makes you want to shoot more.”

Bruchman has carved a remarkable niche for himself in New York City’s bustling music scene. In addition to his work as a music photographer, he is also the lead web designer for the popular music web site CMJ.com, the founder of a music blog called Subinev.com, and a singer and guitarist in the band Man in Gray.

Bruchman first became interested in photography during high school. He borrowed his father’s Minolta SR-T and VH-C cameras, enrolled in a photography course at a local college’s summer program, and started honing his skills by taking pictures of his friends and photographing local punk rock concerts.

In college he switched his focus to film and earned a BFA in Film and Television Production and a minor in Computer Science from New York University. While in school he spent most of his free time shooting video of local bands. He eventually bought a Sony Cybershot DSC 717 and started taking stills at concerts.

When he was young, Bruchman aspired to be a comic book artist. He even had his own business cards with the title "Future comic book artist" printed under his name. Today, he draws bands’ press photos as if they were robots. He calls the renderings “Robotinevs.”

With so many talents, Bruchman’s biggest challenge may very well be deciding where to focus his creative energy. Rest assured he’ll be conveying the concert experience for years to come.

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