Heilung
March 7
This Friday, my partner and I were invited to see Heilung and Eivør at Helsingin Jäähalli, marking the first stop of their tour hosted by Tuskalive. As a token of gratitude, we volunteered to photograph the performance. While I've had some experience with live music shoots before, this event was on a much larger scale. What even is a photo pit, anyway? I found myself a bit confused about the rules and information. Instead of a photographer pass, we were granted a media pass, theoretically allowing us to stay in the photo pit for most of the performance.
For this shoot, I choose a Canon R6 mkII paired with a Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens—a perfect match in heaven for such an event. I feel confident in my research and decision-making process. The camera performs exceptionally well in low light, and a lens with such large aperture. None of this would have been possible without the invaluable help from Adam @a.valkeinenmedia and Jony @feelm_creative.
The shoot itself went smoothly, despite the venue being packed with people. While running around in the photo pit, halfway through the concert, disaster struck: my memory card was full, and I realized I had mistakenly used a 16GB card. Luckily, I had brought a spare micro SD card, which I usually use for my drone, combined with a card adapter to fit the camera. However, as I swapped cards, the camera showed errors. I tried everything—changing slots, cleaning the card—without success. Just as I was about to give up, I noticed the micro SD wasn't fully inserted into the adapter. Problem solved, or so I thought. The camera detected the card but required formatting. Fortunately, it was a quick fix, and I was back in the photo pit in no time.
I particularly enjoyed using the auto focus—One-shot AF and Servo AF features with the Canon R6 mkII. The joystick made it very easy to experiment with different compositions. However, the lighting and atmosphere of Heilung's dark and mystical performance, sometimes posed challenges. There were moments when the autofocus struggled to find accurate focus points, which forced me to crank the lens to manual and pull focus by hand, and additionally adjust the ISO, somewhere between 1000-3000. Some of the very dark images had some noise, but manageable during the editing.
I'm incredibly thankful for this opportunity, the wonderful collaboration, and the support of friends and colleagues when I needed it most. It's an experience I'll cherish forever!
I must mention that Heilung is a European experimental folk music band. Formed in 2014 in Copenhagen, Denmark, the group is made up of members from Denmark, Norway, and Germany. Their music is based on texts and runic inscriptions from Germanic peoples of the Iron Age and Viking Age. If you haven’t heard them, I highly recommend checking them out. I’ll share a music video link below.
Pictures shot by me - video is not.
