Working hard on my band photography, seeing as how I seem to pick up a reasonably good and consistent seat every couple weeks. This is Chanpan, consisting of Grace Dumdaw and Lance and Matthew Tran.
Thanks for seeing my work!
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2026
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It's not an editing trick. I'd bet any amount of money that the drummer's nose didn't look like that in real life. Since that's true, there is a range of photo techniques that can be used that spans between that unrealistic image, and what the scene looked like in real life.
To put it anther way, these photos are not as good as they possibly could be. They definitely could more accurately capture what the light actually looked like. Shooting raw and selecting the camera's native color space will close the gap between this image and what reality looked like.
I did what I could with the equipment I was allowed to bring into the venue. I apologize that I’ve let you down with these pictures. However, I’ve brought the best camera I could bring into the venue, without being the designated concert photographer.
I'm not saying they're bad, they're great. Keep up the great work, and keep learning how to hone your skills.
Also, shoot in raw whenever you can.
OP stated the camera was an iPhone 17. This explains the saturation and low dynamic range. Would a human eye see more detail in things like the nose, certainly yes. However, small phone camera sensors cannot deal with the huge dynamic range in concert settings like this. That's why they use all the "tricks" you're referring to but clearly that didn't work here.