Exercise: Standing back.

Outline: Select a medium - long focal length to shoot and review the experience afterwards.

This is great for gig photography. Usually you are way back in the crowd and having a good focal length ability makes it easier to get good shots of the performer on stage. Take my shots of Black veil Brides at Download Festival this year.

BVB at Download 2012

As you can see, we were stood quite a way from the stage so you can still see the artists but you cant really 'see' them. By using a longer focal length, you are able to get a good close up of the artist. But there are some drawbacks to shooting this way.

BVB's Ashley Purdy

This photo of BVB's Ashley Purdy was framed really well, until someone either jumped or waved their arm up infront of me. Now you can see the blurring of the movement at the bottom of the image and this is a difficulty that shooting at this focal length creates. You can also have an arm or hand straight in your shot so you cant see the subject at all, or it takes the focus from the subject so the subject is blurred and in venues indoors this is even more of a problem, as the subject can then disappear into darkness as the light/flash focuses on the disturbance and not the performer.
It's also difficult, but not impossible, to get a full length shot of the artist while shooting this way as well. You can almost always guarantee to not be able to see below the artists knees due to tops of heads or hands etc being in the way. But I like shooting this way as it's not always possible to get to the front, especially in large crowds in a festival environment. It does give you the ability to get some great shots though and so you appear to be closer than you are.

BVB's Andy Biersack

Conclusion: Shooting at a long focal length will always cause difficulties due to the large distance between you and your subject. I am personally much more comfortable shooting this way in certain situations though as I like to take more natural shots and catch people unaware and this makes that a lot easier as they may never know you are taking their photograph.