Why not. Pixels are cheap unlike film and processing. Besides you don’t have to try to remember what happened, at least you have images the next day, even blurred ones count, to help you remember what you did. Sounds like a win to me.

An even better shot is when a group of people are holding up their cameraphones up.

The Militant bets that 90% of those people wielding cameras have blogs as well.

I know that photographer front and center; she takes some quality pictures. I’m telling you, she’s way too down to even consider “trying to be the next cobrasnake.”

Hey – who the hell took the pic from the stage? Can musicians afford their own digital cameras as well? What the hell?

F***ing bloggers! They are everywhere…

I saw a guy holding his cellphone high and recording the show for at least a few minutes while everyone around him was going wild. I thought to myself : what a dumb ass. The show is right there in front of you and you’re going to record it to remember it for the future ? Why not enjoy it now ?

Later I went upstairs and hung up in the balcony. Inbetween the spotlights pulse one and off, you
can see the crowd was awash with cellphone/camera LCD screens.

Enjoy what’s in front of you damn it !

Camera phones are fine if you are just takin’ one snap.

But it is the douchebags that have the huge cameras that crowd around the stage snapping pics and then, the worst is, looking at the screen to see how it came out. Of course the screen is bright and annoying….not as annoying as the douches that use the flash!

If you are going to have to take pics to look cool, turn off your screen, check them out later.

That pic is so hilarious!

Yeah, I used to feel special with my 35mm SLR, now everyone has cheep digitals and everyone (including me) thinks they need to capture the moment and call to brag to people on their cell phones. So much for living in the moment.

You guys sound like old people. When I was young…

We are turning Japanese.

It is getting pretty excessive. The front row is often filled with people who took a photo class in high school and then bought a mid-range SLR, who are trying to take photos of the band from the perspective of the band’s knees with the hopes that someone will notice them and ask them to be the staff/tour photographer, or that the blogger standing next to them will ask to run their pics on his/her site. Behind the front-row shooters are rows of people with compact cameras who don’t even know how to turn the flash off which makes their pics absolutely lousy as well as annoying as hell to both audience and performer. Interspersed between them all are the cell-phone snappers who, when they’re not text messaging their friends, take sporadically take pics featuring the back of a tall dude’s head until the first notes of the band’s current single are played at which time everyone will simultaneously hold their phone as high over their head as they can, aim it in the general direction of the stage and snap pic after blurry pic for the entire duration of the song and then shuffle outside for a cigarette as soon as that song is over.

Hey, you should be free to enjoy a show however you want. But you should also recognize that you have an effect on the show. For a lot of artists, performing live is about being in the moment. And when they look out at the audience and see people are trying harder to record the moment for later than they are to experience it in the now… well, that makes it pretty hard for a musician to be inspired to give a great performance. When an audience is right there experiencing a show as it happens a performer may be compelled to take risks, try things they haven’t before, things that might not work, that if taken out of the context of that moment might seem ridiculous but in that moment made the performance unique. But when you’re on stage and it’s obvious that people are more interested in documenting than experiencing it becomes painfully hard not to focus on keeping your crayon inside the lines and trying to avoid anything that might misrepresent the experience when it’s posted to blogs/youtube the next day. The problem is that if the band isn’t inspired or comfortable enough to give a great or unique performance then everyone’s experience suffers. That’s the effect that amateur shooters who aren’t watchful of themselves create.

Maybe these shooters are only 10% of the crowd, but their presence is larger than their numbers.

I do believe that photography is for everyone. But there is a better way to go about it. Just b/c you’re not a pro doesn’t mean you can’t adopt some of the pros’ practices. There are a number of things you and your camera can do that will not only result in less negative impact on the show but will also yield much better photos. It only takes a bit more care and effort.

Here’s one band’s recent experience and perspective.

And here’s Stewie Griffin’s opinion:
“Oh that is so lame; every hot girl that can aim a camera thinks she’s a photographer. Ooo, you took a black and white picture of a lawn chair and its shadow and developed it at Save-On. You must be so brooding and deep.”

I tend to forget about everything around me at shows – feeling the music and all – so the cameras don’t bother me.

I’ve noticed the more professional ones can get all the pictures they need within the first three songs.

It’s the people yapping about stupid, non-music crap that really bugs me.

“I’ve noticed the more professional ones can get all the pictures they need within the first three songs.”

At most large shows (big clubs/theatres & arenas) that’s all the pros get. All credentialed shooters are ushered into the pit before the band takes the stage. They all shoot the first three songs then everyone gets ushered out.

What sucks is that photos of bands tend to be dull, but if they turned the cameras around on the audience, they could find a lot more interesting stories to tell… with just a snap.