This Is Not A Photo Opportunity

Mess Hall + Bridezilla + Cabins @ The Zoo 13-03-10

Tonight is a night that really highlights everything that’s wrong about the three songs, no flash rule.

The night gets off to a good start as I’m let in for free despite not covering the gig – I do keep my promise to spend the saved money on merch, buying both the Mess Hall and Bridezilla albums – and then I find $5 on the floor, which pays for my first drink.

Cabins start the night off with, as it turns out the best lighting of the night before Bridezilla take to the stage.  The lighting is pretty good for them too with the first three, no flash issue manifesting much later in their set – around the six or seven song mark – when violinist Daisy Tully bends so far over backwards whilst playing that she’s almost bent in two, replicating her pose in this shot of Dan Boud’s.  Not only is she doing this but she’s doing it right under one of The Zoo’s spot lights.  It really is a breathtaking moment and it looks absolutely magnificent.   But because it is a long way after the third song no one is taking a photo of it to capture the moment.  (I normally hate the use of “The Moment” in reference to gig photography, but this moment was just so sublime that there’s no other phrase to use really).

And so to The Mess Hall, who highlight a completely different aspect of the rule by playing in the dark for the three songs we’re allowed to photograph.  Amazingly I end up at the very front, against the stage, and in the best position to photograph both of them; this never happens and it’s quite ironic that it happens on a night when I’m only photographing for my own pleasure and not for a publication.  There is some light on Jed but it’s very, very red whist Cec is more in the ISO 6400 1/30 second range of darkness.  Song 6 arrives and someone turns up to do the lights; a shame that it’s six songs too late.  But then they disappear after the one song, leaving a bit more light on Cec than before but a bit less on Jed, with the stage in an overall darker place than it was during their first five songs.

Photographing The Mess Hall tonight was largely a complete waste of time.  If there is an upside it’s that I don’t have to send the photos to an Editor afterwards; I would have been even more angry than I was if I had had to submit the photos for publication.  Even so it’s incredibly frustrating that you have conditions imposed on you but then a complete mockery is made of these.  I know that I’ve posted before about not really having a problem with the 3 songs, no flash rule (although it is depressing when it means you miss out an potentially great shots, like could have been possible photographing Bridezilla for the whole of their set instead of the first three songs) but when it’s so dark during those three songs that it becomes a pointless exercise I’d rather be told that no photography is allowed, rather than be treated with the contempt and professional discourtesy of being told I can do something, only for the powers that be to make it impossible to actually do it.

Pop may very well eat itself but it also seems intent on burning the negatives on the way.

Some more photos (mainly of Cabins and Bridezilla) on Flickr.

The Mess Hall

Bridezilla

Cabins

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 9th, 2010 at 7:05 pm. It is filed under Music Photography and tagged with Bridezilla, Brisbane, Cabins, Justin Edwards, Sony a700, The Mess Hall, The Zoo. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.