Photographing live music is all about timing and technique. It’s also one of the few times where the photographer has zero control over the lighting conditions. It’s not unusual for performers to be lit with strobing lights or extreme color casts. And while these elements look great on stage, they can be tricky to photograph. Although having subjects with perfect skin tones and pristine white balance isn’t usually possible, doing a bit of color grading can make a big difference. The folks from Mango Street share a few tips on how they approach color grading when editing concert photos.
Tip #1: Adjusting for Skin Tone
If the colorcast on your subject is yellow, blue, green or magenta its pretty easy to get the subjects skin tone back to a more normal shade. Start by making white balance adjustments. If you are dealing with an image with a red color cast you will want to slide your tint all the way to green and slide the temperature to blue. From there make adjustments to the primary hues and saturation in the calibration menu. Adding a mask to the subject will let you increase the exposure, without blowing out the background.
