Ok, in a world where everything gets evaluated in chess pieces, music in general is the queen.

But LIVE music is the king. Long live the king!

My passion and interest in live music traces back to high school, when I started playing the drums. I remember that, despite being the worst drummer a band could ever be so unlucky to have, from the very first moment I held a pair of drumsticks in my hands, all I wanted to do was to go up on a stage and play in front of an audience. 

Reason being, the stage gave me such an amazing feeling, such a rush of adrenaline that I got kinda addicted to it. I knew that, back in the studio, I wasn't a drummer you would notice very much, but once I was on stage, things changed and I felt on the top of the world. 

I played with a band for 3 years in high school, "The Joker Suicide" and then moved to Venice for 3 years where the only times I played I was alone in my room hitting the crap outta my elctronic drum set. While living in Japan in 2011/2012 I found another band, "Triple S"  and together we played a LOT of venues in Sapporo and I loved every moment of it. 

"Why the hell would we be interested in reading about your personal history in music?! Get to the point and be done, you fool!" Fair enough. The point is : being kind a musician myself, is simply obvious that my passion for live music and photography are linked together. 

In the last year and a half in Rome, I went to many concerts, shot a few for personal fun, and got asked to shoot some others for magazines and e-zines. Shooting concerts is a LOT of fun, but there ain't anyone paying you for it, be sure of that! And since I had to wait for approval of the images or for the article to be published before sharing the images on social networks, I ended up not sharing them AT ALL. So here's a little gallery of my favorite concert photos, all taken in a club called Circolo degli Artisti.

Happy now? :)

As for technical infos go,  when i'm shooting at Circolo degli Artisti (due to its particular stage lighting) to achieve this look I overexpose the images by a couple of stops to get informations out of the shadows and place the artist between myself and the stage lights. It requires a lot of moving on my side and always reframing the image, but it's worth it. All image are shot with my Nikon D700 and either a Nikkor 20mm ƒ2.8D and a Nikon 50mm ƒ1.4G lenses.

Nico