I was at The Cavern on a shoot this weekend. I wasn’t there to shoot the band, but I decided to snap a few shots of them anyway. The band is called They Were Stars, and they were pretty darn good.
The stage at The Cavern is more than just tiny. It is almost nonexistent. The lighting is pretty bad, what little lighting is available. This may sound like a recipe for photo disaster, but sometimes these tiny, poorly-lit stages can make for some good shooting.
You need to work harder at it, but you can use the weaknesses to your advantage. One thing, the band is packed together tightly, so you can often get great pictures of them interacting with each other. Often, band members will be far apart on a big stage. A huge stage makes it hard to get more than one or two members in the same photo.
Another way to make these stages work for you is to really drag your shutter and pop the band with some flash. The little stage lighting available will create some cool ghosting and a tiny bit of blur, but your flash will freeze the important parts (like the face or musical instrument). This technique can feel/look more energetic than your average concert image.
Anyway, here are a few images from my efforts:
