In this review article, I want to share my experience with the professional memory card and storage company Angelbird Technologies. Have you never heard of them before? No worries this company might be the best-hidden secret on the market.

In December 2019/January 2020, I flew five times to Saudi Arabia to cover the biggest music festivals in the country. I was still shooting with my beloved Nikon D700, but I had the feeling that it’s time for an upgrade, especially when shooting such prestigious events for LiveNation.

I went to my trusted camera store in Vienna and bought the camera. Also, I needed a fast and correctly working memory card. I was using SanDisk for the last ten years, but the fact that two cards stopped working left some questions open if I should rebuy them.

The guy in the camera store suggested getting a memory card from a company called “Angelbird Technologies.” I have never heard of them, and chances are good you haven’t heard of them either.
I bought an SD 32GB card and was wondering if I made the right decision.

Once at home, I started a poll on Facebook asking members of our concert photography community which memory card they are using. See the results below.

SD 64GB AV PRO MK2 V90

SD Dual Card Reader

SSD2GO PKT MK2

WHERE OTHERS SPEND A LOT OF TIME ANALYZING MARKET POTENTIAL, TESTING CONSUMER ACCEPTANCE OR SHELF IMPACTS, WE JUST GET BUSY CREATING THE PRODUCTS YOU WANT. THAT MIGHT SEEM RISKY, BUT IT'S MORE FUN TO INNOVATE WITH FREEDOM. AND THE RESULTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

Angelbird Technologies

Let’s start with some statements from the community which make me really proud.

“You have shown me the way…and for that, I am truly grateful!!” – Emma

“A really huge thank you, Matthias! I wouldn’t be where I am now as a photographer without you. Keep up the great work.” – Pasi

“You rock Matthias – thank you for all your help, guidance & support — very much appreciated!!” – Nick

“I’m an aspiring concert photographer, I’ve fallen head over heels in love with concert photography. You’re a massive inspiration to me and I’ve been watching all your content!” – Brittany

Personal Development

I started How To Become A Rockstar Photographer 4,5 years ago. The main idea was to write about my experiences as an aspiring music photographer and share my findings with like-minded people. If you would have told me, that I am going to build a worldwide community of awesome and passionate people, I would have called you a dreamer. And yet, today, this is exactly what happened. I am living my DREAM! Not only do I do the things that I love, taking photos of my favorite bands, but I also have built a brand and HTBARP became the business that allows me to work from home and spend a lot of time with my daughter.

When my daughter was born, I knew that I want to be with her every day and be an inspirational dad. This decision also meant that I needed to take a step back from my career as a touring photographer and focus on shows in Vienna, Austria. What I found is that my values shifted to my family as well. Do I rather want to bring my daughter to bed or do I want to be in a murky club instead? Don’t get me wrong, I still love concert photography and I’ll try my best to go to more concerts in 2019. I just wanted to comment on the fact, that you might have seen fewer photos from me in the last couple of months and the fact that we’re getting our second baby in a couple of days makes it even more challenging.

I also started to meditate, established a daily morning routine (Tabata workout, Yoga, Journaling,..) and took more time for my self-development to become a better version of myself every day.

However, without doubt 2018 was the BEST year for me (so far) and I want to give you a short summary of what happened in the HTBARP world.

PODCAST

In each episode of the HTBARP Podcast, you’ll get access all areas to the most influential music photographers of our time where they’ll share their secrets, successes and crazy stories from their Rockstar life. We reached 75 episodes and 75 000+ listeners. I had the honor to talk to legends such as Neil Preston, Bob Gruen, Chester Simpson, David Bergman, Christie Goodwin, Robert M Knight, Adam Elmakias and many more.  Click here to listen to all the interviews. There are only 25 to go until I reach Nr. 100, which will be the last episode (for more info what’s coming next -> read Outlook for 2019 below)

#HTBARP

We reached 192 00(!) photos tagged with #htbarp on Instagram. This is just unbelievable and I am grateful for every one of you who is using the #htbarp hashtag to generate the coolest concert photography gallery on Instagram. Simply add #htbarp to your concert photos and get the chance to get published in my HTBARP Werkschau.

You can directly download

1. Issue #1,
2. Issue #2,
3. Issue #3 by clicking on the links.

We also started an htbarp IG account where we share the highlights from the #htbarp gallery.

ONLINE COURSES

I offer now 3 video courses: The Beginners Guide To Concert Photography, my premium academy Shooting The Rockstars, and Rock Instagram. With 800+ students worldwide it exceeded my biggest dreams. I always wanted to help and inspire people and online courses are the best way I can think of getting my knowledge delivered to you. Thanks for everyone who joined one of my courses and made a step up in their game.

AMAZON BOOK

I published my first Amazon book (Kindle + paperback) and it went straight to Nr.1 in the “Digital Photography” section. Get it here.

FREE 10 min COACHINGS

I started to do free 10min coaching sessions where I try to help you as much as possible solving your biggest challenge as a concert photographer. I got great feedback and therefore I want to extend my offer. Every Wednesday I’ll block 1 hour (for max. 4 slots) where I will answer your questions. Please click here to sign up for a date that fits best for you. This service is 100% free. I love to connect with you on a personal basis and I guess these 10min coachings are a great way to do this.

COLLABORATIONS

Eargasm

As you might know, I did an extensive earplugs test last year and I got a great deal with one of my favorite brands “Eargasm”. Click here to read my complete review and get -10% off.

Format

I believe that every concert photographer should have a great online portfolio. However, my biggest frustration was that I was a photographer and I didn’t want to deal with all these technical issues. If you’re not a developer, things can get tricky, even when you just want to upload some photos on a WordPresspage. Therefore I reached out to the guys from format.com, a service that lets you build your online portfolio page within minutes. Read my review and watch my step-by-step video tutorials on how to build your portfolio here. If you sign up from my page, you’ll get a 30 days free trial.

HTBARP GOES CHINA

I had the great opportunity to launch my Beginners Guide to Concert Photography on a Chinese platform that is specialized to promote my course on Wechat (1 billion active users/month)! This is a huge chance for me to enter the Chinese market. Let’s see if there are some Chinese music photographers around.

THE PRODIGY PRESS SHOT

I had the honor of working with The Prodigy for the 3rd time. This time I did a 2 minutes backstage portrait shooting (thanks to Nici Eberl Photography for your assistance). They liked the phtoos and took the one of Liam Howlett (middle) for their new promo shot. Weeks later their new Album “no Tourist” reached Nr.1 in the UK Dance Charts.

WhAT’S NEXT

2019 is already going to be a crazy year.

HTBARP Podcast Book

I’ll finishe my Podcast project when reahing 100 episodes and I am going to start writing soon. My main vision with the Podcast was to learn and get inspired by the best music photographers on this planet and finally publish a handbook with the best tips and tricks on how to suceed in this business. This concept is not new (see Napoleon Hill, Tim Ferriss or Tony Robins to name a few), but it has never been done in the music photography world. I’ll try to get a publisher and I promise to get the book out in 2019. So, this puts a lot of pressure on me now ;).

Community Building/Online Business

Since I get a lot of questions on how I built my online business, I’ll start teaching community building and online marketing soon. I have already an idea to start a new business (maybe an agency) and I got some invitations from universites to speak about my experiences in this field.

Learning Chinese

And the 3rd big goal for 2019 is to learn Chinese (Mandarin) since my 2,5 years old daughter already outperforms me in speaking.

I wish you all a successfull 2019 and ROCK ON

BEST OF PHOTOS 2018

Shooting 30 Seconds To Mars was always challenging. In the last years I had two opportunities to take photos, but at both concerts, photographers were only allowed to shot from FOH (Soundboard). Since I only had my 80-200mm lens with me, I resigned.
Not this time. I was prepared and rent a Nikon 200mm-400mm f4 lens which is a beast of the lens. With 7,5kg it’s a heavy brick and not much fun to shoot with. However, for a soundboard shooting, you’ll need at least a focal length of 300mm. The zoom capability of the lens was more important than an aperture of f/2.8 which you can get with a fixed 200mm or 300mm lens.
My plan was to use a Monopod to stabilize the lens and shoot wide open at f/4.
Once I arrived at the venue the promoter told me that I get access to the photo pit, because the front of house platform was not suitable for photographers.
I asked on Facebook before which conditions other photographers had to deal with when shooting 30 Seconds To Mars on their Monolith tour. In Spain, they could shoot from the photo pit, whereas in Germany and Switzerland concert photographers got banned to the back of the venue. My lesson, from this shooting, is that you need to be well prepared because you’ll never know what’ll happen at before the concert. Fortunately, I also had my Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8 with me which was the perfect lens for shooting in the photo pit. Not so much the 200-400mm. I tried the lens for a couple of shots and got some cool portraits, but decided to go with more wide angle shots. If you get the opportunity to shoot 30 Seconds To Mars on their Monolith Tour definitely go for it.

Do you want to become a Concert Photographer?
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Setting up an online portfolio showing your concert photos is crucial if you want to become a music photographer and get photo passes.

In 2017 Portugal.The Man released their new album “Woodstock” which kicks ass. Their single “Feel it still” got Nr.1 in the alternative Billboard charts and they played in front of 10 000 people at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. 

I had the great opportunity to sit down with Zach (bassist) and discuss his life as a musician, which struggles he had on the way to success and why he has more cameras on tour with him than me as a professional photographer.   

Check out my Podcast Interview with Zach here.

Do you want to become a Concert Photographer?
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Phoenix and the Fuji XT-2

I had the great pleasure to work with the French band Phoenix when they were headlining the Out Of The Woods Festival, Wiesen, Austria.

The portrait session was scheduled at 6pm in the backstage area and I had plans to shoot available light only. As so often with these portrait jobs, Phoenix arrived late at the venue and so we had to postpone the shooting to 7.30 pm. Ten minutes before I got a call from the record label lady that we have to postpone it again to 10.30pm shortly before they enter the stage. My plan to shoot in available light died and I had to find another solution. Only equipped with the Fuji X-T2, a 23mm f1.4, 16-55mm f2.8 and 50-140mm f2.8 I decided to do the portraits in their backstage train wagon using an aperture of 2.0 and ISO 3200. I had 2 min time.

Phoenix seems to be very relaxed with their photo policy. They allowed shooting the complete show from the pit and it was a joy using the Fuji-XT2. I´ll do a review about mirrorless cameras in concert photography soon. With this post I want you to judge if the Fuji is capable for concert photography.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments below

Do you want to become a Concert Photographer?
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In January I launched my first online academy called “Shooting The Rockstars”.

I put the last 8 years of my life finding out what works and what not as concert photographer. I read all the books and watched literally all Youtube videos that are available on this topic and I talked to other concert photography leaders. When I dug through hundreds of survey results and personal emails from people of my How To Become A Rockstar Photographer community, it became clear to me that everyone’s struggling with the same problems. It doesn’t matter how old you are, what professional background you have or where you live.

However, for some reason, when I looked around, a course that was as specific as that just didn’t exist.

So, I distilled it down to the very best content and strategies that really worked to build my career as a concert photographer. That’s when I packaged it into a comprehensive learning system that I called “Shooting The Rockstars”.

For the last year it’s only been internal referals for my newsletter followers and there are already hundreds of students in my academy. The good news is that I´ll open it for the public soon. Right now you can get on the waiting list at this point and get notified when the next class opens up by clicking here.

Watch what Nici, a Shooting The Rocsktars alumni has to say:

In February I joined my favorite swedish Punk-Metal Band Atlas Losing Grip on their “Crooked Miles 2016” tour. through Germany.

Being on tour with a punk-metal band means nine people squeezed together in a small bus (not one of the big nightliners but a Sprinter bus), playing in small clubs with shitty light equipment, no showers and sometimes no internet access.
Let me explain a typical day on tour. We had a female busdriver who started to drive to the next venue after breakfast. We arrived around lunch time and started with unloading the equipment. No tour roadie included. After the soundcheck we had dinner either in the Club or we got a Pizza or Kebap. After the gig we went back to our bus which was parked in front of the club and went to bed. The next morning we had no access to the clubs anymore and therefore there was no possibility to get a shower or even go to the toilet. So, we started to stop at gas stations on the highway to at least brush our teeth. This was the real punk rock attidude for me and I didn´t shower for 4 days the first time in my life.

I just wanted to show you that this is what bands really have to go trough before they become famous. Flying in a private plane is out of reach for 99% of all bands. So better be prepared if you want to go on tour with a not so famous band. We had a great time and I love those guys. Unfortunately, they split up soon after the tour. At least my photos were not the reason for breaking up (at least this is what they told me).

In April I flew to Buenos Aires, Argentina where I was part of the production team (together with Matias Altbach) of the Highlights Exhibition. This was my first big international exhibition and I had an awesome time. We invited Dana Distortion, Javier Bragado and Dean Chalkley to join us and the five of us openend the biggest concert photography exhibition in 2016.
These seven days in Buenos Aires are proof that you can reach everything you dream of, if you work hard for it. On the opening night we even had 3 TV stations who were interested in our event and we gave a press conference in front of 150 interested people explaining how they can become concert photographers too.
I got to know Matias, Dana and Javier and I became close friends with them. I am so grateful I left my comfort zone and did this project with these awesome human beings.

On June 27th I became a father of my first daughter Mia. This day changed my life completely and I can´t be more happy about her. I guess every parent will agree, that you’ll start to see the world through different eyes. Your child becomes the epicenter of your life and you need some time to adopt to the new situations. I had a hard time in the beginning since I am working from my home office and all of a sudden I didn´t have the time to get everything done. It takes some serious thoughts about time management, but in the end we found a way where I can work from home and spend as much time as I want with my daughter.

In August I was invited to work for the organizer of “Rock en Seine”, the biggest alternative festival in Paris, France. I was one of 20 Instagram influencers who provided their photos from the festival, however I was the only international concert photographer beside french food and fashion bloggers. I stayed there for 3 days and met a lot of great guys including Laure, one of my students and Mauro Melis (official The Cure Photographer). Thanks so much guys for the friendly welcome. It’s great to meet concert photographers from all around the world.

What started as a little idea finally became reality in September 2016. I always had the dream of publishing my own magazine. The idea of the #htbarp magazine first came to my mind when a friend mentioned that he was starting his own magazine, featuring photos of his community members. When I heard that, I was sold on the idea. The next step was to establish my unique hashtag #htbarp on Instagram. I started to ask concert photographers to use the hashtag #htbarp to mark their music photography work. After 6 months we collected 45,000+ (!) awesome concert photos in this gallery. It is unbelievable! So I thought, how cool would it be to give people the chance to get their work published and receive worldwide attention? The idea of the #htbarp magazine was born. I began to curate the Instagram gallery and chose 55 concert photographers to be published in this first issue of the #htbarp magazine. We know how challenging it can be to make a career out of concert photography and therefore I want to help you with this first step. Download my HTBARP magazine #1 here.

In September I was invited by Nikon, Fuji and Manfrotto to join them on the largest photography fair, the Photokina in Cologne.

In October I started my HTBARP: Free Community on Facebook, a group which helps people to get started as concert photographers. With more than 1400 members it´s becoming one of the best community on the internet. Join here.

Here are my best of 2016 Photos

What were your Highlights in 2016?

You want to become a Concert Photographer?
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You want to become a Concert Photographer?
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