Andrew St. Clair

In my experience, Hip Hop shows usually have nice bright lighting which suggests success & glamour. I’ve gotten some stellar pics shooting artists like Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, A Tribe Called Quest, & Die Antwoord and I was hoping that I’d have the same luck with Lupe Fiasco, who has just released a new album.

I knew this was going to be a crazy crowded show (it was sold out), so I got to Webster Hall as early as possible. As with many hip hop shows, I figured that there was going to be a photo pit, but I didn’t want to take any chances in case there wasn’t one so I could grab a spot in the crowd at the front of the stage. But thankfully there was one and so I could relax and walk around before the show.

Since the place was packed and was pretty hard to move around on the floor of the Grand Ballroom, I took advantage of my photo pass to get access to the balcony (which was closed off to most people) and met Dosage, a rapper from Philly. He told me that he was going to perform on stage with Lupe “for a split second.” I had a hunch that there would be other special guests, so I vowed to stick around as long as possible.

Which turned out to be easier than I thought. The photographers in the pit weren’t given the normal a 3 song limit. So, I was able to stay not only for all of opener Black Milk’s set, but for Lupe Fiasco’s entire performance… which was roughly 2 hours. I was thrilled with some of the photos I got very early on. But since the extra pit time was a rarity, I decided to take full advantage.

Lupe is very photogenic and has a very commanding stage presence. He was jumping around, putting his foot up on the monitors, leaning into the audience and, 2 songs in, Lupe sprayed water into the crowd (and consequently the photo pit). I missed the shot and got soaked. I didn’t get mad because, I had a feeling that he was going to do it again… and he did. 3 more times! And each of those 3 times, I was ready. I would watch for him to walk over to the drum kit and pick up water bottles. Most of the time he’d drink from them, but I was ready regardless.

Since Mr. Fiasco found it difficult to stay still, I needed to shoot him with nothing less than 1/250sec shutter speed, mostly shooting wide open at f/2.8 at an 1250-2000 ISO on the D300. While there was plenty of backlighting, it didn’t compare to the sparse front-lighting, so I ended up shooting more at ISO 2000 than I would have liked.

And as I predicted, there were some special guests. Not just Dosage, but also Sway (the British rapper/freestyler), and John Legend who all took the stage to support Lupe. But make no mistake. This was Lupe’s show. He put on an exciting performance which is easily the best performance I’ve seen all year, so far. And thankfully, I got a ton of great pictures. The photo set I submitted to BrooklynVegan.com is pretty epic, so be sure to check it out.