Photographing a HS Marching Band Competition

Los Gatos HS Marching Band, a photo by dlnwelch on Flickr.

My son is in the drum line for his HS marching band. I volunteered this year to help photograph the band's Saturday night competitions. It was a lot of fun but also quite a learning experience. I did some research to get started, and learned very quickly at the first competition, it is like shooting any night sporting event, but with a few twists.  The band is in the middle of a football field. The "pit", e.g. the fixed percussion section is usually on the sideline at the 50 yd line, between the field and the viewing stands. There are several possible positions for shooting. One is in the stands, so you can look down. However, this puts you quite a distance away. This is good for a video position as you can see the whole formation of the band, but not so interesting IMO for still shots.  My preferred position is to the right or left of the pit, shooting at a 30-45 deg angle to the band. I want to be at field level, either standing or shooting from a kneeling position. You have to stay out of the way as there are judges walking around and they really don't want you in the way. Most of the time I was on the track that typically surrounds a HS football field. As a result, long lenses are a must. I used a 70-200 2.8 with my Nikon 300s body. It worked great. Flash is out as it is a distraction to the band. So, open your lens all the way up to 2.8. Since there is a fair amount of movement, and you are zoomed out to 200 most of the time, you need to be able to use a shutter speed of at least 300.  Just a warning, lights in some of these stadiums are bad. The best stadium allowed me to get that combo at 1600 ISO. The worst stadium I was shooting at 3200 ISO, and often dipped down to 200 shutter speed. I recommend bringing a monopod as it will often help in the more poorly lit stadiums.  OK, that's the set up. Now what to shoot. The typical performance is only 15 minutes, so you need to have a plan, and work fast. I studied videos of the bands performance so I know the sequence of the movements pretty well. I also asked the band director and some of the band members for their favorite parts of the performance.  I put together a "shot list" based on  that info. Once the performance starts, move through your shot list,  taking several exposures of each shot. I used both low continuous and single shot, and still don't know which I prefer. As long as I had 2-4 exposures for each item on my shot list, it all worked well.  In between your planned shots, there is plenty of opportunity to add other shots based on what strikes you.  During a 15 minute performance, I managed to typically get  ~200 to 300 shots to work with. After that, its on to post processing. I prefer shooting in raw, so it gave me plenty of latitude to adjust basic color and exposure, correct for noise, and crop for the best composition. Working in Lightroom, I created a collection of the best shots, usually ending up with about ~50. I created a web site for each performance straight from Lightroom  and sent the link to the parents. I created a second collection and published to Facebook for the kids to tag and comment on. All in all, I really did enjoy doing this, learned a lot, and look forward to doing it again next season. For an example, check out the last performance on my web site.