Friday July 25th 2014 - Bell Center
I'm quiet sure the concert was good (I didn't get to stay after the accredited first three songs), but photography wise, this has had to be in my top 5 of worst experiences, (of all time), since my debut in concert photography, 2006. Not because of poor light, even though it was far than perfect, nor was it because he didn't come near us once during the 3-song stint, but mainly... because of the conditions we were subjected too. Let me explain...
We were instructed by management that we'd be shooting from the pit. But, because the venue was completely sold out, the pit was reduced (moved forward, and we were jammed up against the stage. The problem, is that not only were we limited to the left side of the stage, but the later was more than 7' high! Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those photographers, that thinks that because I work for a venue, that everything should be made easy for us. I enjoy a good challenge, but would rather it be of a technical nature, instead of it being logistics related.
That being said, I consider this as being a bad judgement call, on the bands management part, as the logical thing would have been to place photo/video personnel at the soundboard with telephoto lenses. Goes to show you, no matter how big you get in life, you may still end up having incompetent idiots working for you. ;)
This was one of these times, that you grabbed what you could, not what you wanted, nothing short of jumping up in the air, holding a fisheye lens, at arms length, and hope for the best.
Still, here's what we were able to capture, See images HERE
