Photographing big name acts at big venues just isn’t all that…
BEC is out of town so via the train and thanks to the redevelopment work at Brunswick Street Station it takes me about an hour to get there door-to-door. You’re given a time to be there which is always ages from when they take you to the photo pit, so there’s always a lot of hanging around (and at the BEC it’s the admin centre, no where near the bar…). And when they do take you out to the photo pit it’s usually at least another 20 minutes wait before the band comes on. Despite usually having huge lighting systems there’s still no guarantee that they’ll actually make much use of them in the 3 songs you get to photograph. The stage is huge and with the monitors at the front of the stage it’s well over 6ft high. And then there’s the terms and conditions that you have to adhere to…
Although no 60 seconds from the mixing desk (which is a fair way at a big venue like the BEC) Beyonce-type crap and no dodgy rights grabbing contract this time around, you’re not allowed to photograph Robert Smith from in front of him (apparently he doesn’t like how bad it makes his chins look…) so you can only photograph from the sides. There were six photographers there and so it was three on each side with no swapping of sides, meaning that the photographs were all taken from generally the same position and from a position where you couldn’t get decent photos of half the band.
If I have to choose a side I’ll stand on the left hand side of the stage looking at it for a right handed guitarist on stage. Trouble is when Robert Smith steps away from his mic he tends to turn slightly to his left/anti-clockwise so from where I was standing you got to see a lot of his back…
3 songs and chucked out then venue, then wait for the next train and another hour to get back home. So in the end it takes 3 – 4 hours to photograph for about 15 minutes…
And that’s why photographing big name acts at big venues just isn’t all that…
Some photos below and a few more on my flickr site.
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