For more than four decades, concert photography has been at the center of Kraig Geiger’s life—so much so that he coined a term for it. “I’ve been credited with a file citation letter from Webster’s Dictionary for coining the word ‘contographer,’ and awarded the trademark for the word,” Geiger says, adding that it came to him one night after he photographed a show. “All people who are at a concert shooting photography are doing contography, to a certain extent.”
"I wanted to get this side that nobody else saw, which is the innocence of a person."
It’s a field Geiger knows well, having shot hundreds of music performances by acts ranging from Lynyrd Skynyrd to Luciano Pavarotti, from Kiss to P. Diddy, from ZZ Top to Destiny’s Child. He prefers to work in the photo section affectionately known as The Pit. “The Pit allows you to move back and forth without impeding people’s eyesight, and to work without bothering the group either,” he says. “Now I’m at the point of my career where there’s not a lot of guesswork: I know what I’m going to get.”
One reason for this is Geiger’s gear of choice. “I only use Nikon equipment,” he says. “It’s beautiful and it’s durable—I’ve never had a malfunction in all the time I’ve been shooting.” A fiercely loyal film photographer, Geiger carries a Nikon N90s 35mm SLR in his bag, along with three key lenses: an AF Zoom-NIKKOR 80-200mm f/2.8D ED; an AF Zoom-NIKKOR 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5D IF-ED; and an AF-S VR Zoom-NIKKOR 24-120mm f/3.5-5.6G IF-ED.
Whatever the capture format, Geiger says, it’s all about the picture: “You’re concerned about making the subject look as good as possible, and that’s through exposure and proper composition. That’s the key to everything in this business.”
Discography
Kraig Geiger shot his first concert when he was just 13 years old; here he tells American Photo about his experiences since then.
