All photos taken by me last week on my trip to Miami
More and more am I hearing of the connected youth and how we are always carrying one or two cell phones, a digital camera and laptop computer. Even scarier is when I hear stories or see photos of a concert, rally or public function that shows dozens, if not thousands of people holding an electronic device in the air taking a photo, streaming video, audio or simply tweeting that, “this is such an awesome concert!”
I’m guilty of this but I have an excuse.
I’ve missed the past two Ultra Music Festivals in Miami. I was either moving or had just moved to San Francisco so I couldn’t find the time or funds to go to Miami just to party. WMC is an older crowd (the conference / party aspect of Miami’s techno lovefest) but UMF is a younger crowd, as it’s an all ages event with a daytime focus. Twitter was around and YouTube was around so I spent weeks after UMF in both 2008 and 2009 trying to find info, twitpics, videos and photos from the event so I could at least get the feeling that I was there. I searched and searched and found maybe a dozen videos and 100-200 photos from UMF for each year. What? Why didn’t anyone post any rich media content from the event? UMF is a younger audience of “technology carrying youth” so where are all of the videos and photos?
This year, I saw a staggering amount of people with their cameras and video cameras in the air. People were recording entire DJ sets on their Blackberrys and someone had an iPhone just taking photo after photo which meant I didn’t even see the entire Swedish House Mafia set due to his phone being in front of my face the whole time. Where did his photos go? Why didn’t he post them? Because I saw the photos and they fucking sucked.
There’s a reason why old media will be around for a long time. Very few new media people or “citizen journalists” produce any content worth looking at, much less, paying for. I wouldn’t pay to see Johnny’s iPhone TwitPics because they suck. I don’t care about Jenny’s tweet that says how awesome Carl Cox’s set was at UMF this year and how his remix of Coldplay’s “Trouble” was so awesome. I don’t care despite the fact that I was very interested in the event and keeping up with everything that was happening.
First Things First:
I desperately want all citizen journalists to start producing great content. I really want great content to start happening. You have all of the tools now and they’re freaking affordable. You have 3G/4G network connections to make that data go out to the masses faster and you have unlimited free storage on Flickr and YouTube to post that content. Heck, every Mac and PC comes with software to help you edit those photos and videos to make them look good.
Your content sucks. It’s not even Twitter worthy! Your photos wouldn’t even make good TwitPics. That’s how bad they are. Hey. I suck as a photographer. I completely suck. My photos are finally something I share with my Mom and not feel like I’m wasting her time. Your TwitPic or Flickr upload from your Blackberry was a total waste of time. That video you shot on your Blackberry and uploaded direct to YouTube w/ auto-post to Twitter & Facebook sucked. The 15FPS couldn’t capture the light show accurately, you used the LED flash on the Blackberry which forced a fast exposure time which made the image too dark and the little Blackberry Mic completely choked on the 12,000 watts of Bass going into it which meant the audio was completely unbearable.
That’s just my unprofessional opinion.
I don’t dare upload photos from my iPhone from concerts or festivals and then have the balls to put those on Flickr. If it’s past dusk, you won’t even see me with my iPhone out because I know the photos will suck. This goes for all phones. Shoot wisely.
Stop using your flash! Just stop! The flash does not help. Drop the aperture to f/2.8 or f/1.8 (maximum setting), set the ISO to the 2nd to highest level and then try to use the fastest exposure you can afford to use. On your 5th or 10th snap, you might get a photo good enough for Flickr. I shot 2,000 photos both days at UMF and uploaded 200 of them. I suck as a photographer but I go out every single day and shoot with my Canon G11 and then I try every setting possible to find out what I can do with this camera and even then I spend hours editing, deleting and processing photos for Flickr. Then, I tag, geo-tag, catalog, title and add those photos to Flickr Groups related to the event I attended. I spent 4 hours after getting home from Ultra doing all of that because I care.
You? I honestly don’t know. I’m assuming most mobile phone users might MMS it to their friends or just keep it on the phone till they get a new one. Some users might TwitPic is or upload to Facebook it. Those of you with digital cameras are going to get home and realize you shot 400 photos of complete grainy crap and throw them all away. Both processes are a waste of time.
I laughed when a guy with a video enabled iPod nano had it high in the air for over an hour capturing the Tiesto set. Seriously? That audio and video quality is crap! Good luck putting a one-hour video on YouTube cause it has a 10-minute limit which means you’ll have to edit it down. Oh you don’t know how to do that?
A Disclaimer:
I’m realizing that I sound like a complete asshole in this post. I do but I wouldn’t be making such a big deal about it if these two things hadn’t occurred.
1. Everyone in the audience had a mobile device in the air taking photos & videos
2. 2. It’s been 5 days and there are only 1,000 photos and 50 YouTube Videos online from the event. Half of these completely blow.
So you’re telling me that over 17 thousand people attended an event, took hundreds of thousands of photos and only a few hundred are actually good? I’m not angry that people suck at taking photos or shooting video. Just like I’m not pissed off that everyone sitting next to me at the office can’t go build a house perfectly. Most people just aren’t talented at everything. I know I lack a lot of talent and manage to barely get by with photography.
What’s pissing me off is that you’re all fucking wasting your time! John took an hour of video on his iPod nano and snapped over 100 photos on his Blackberry Bold. Now what? You saw the entire Tiesto set through a stupid iPod nano screen because you HAD to record it and now you realize that it was jumpy, off-center, low-quality and has audio that makes you play the whole thing on mute. Why did you piss off everyone behind you who couldn’t see and cease to see the event as it was happening just so you could cherish this crap video you recorded? Honestly!
How I Record Events:
I should be the one talking, right? My crap photography skills where I had to take 2,000 photos just get maybe 50 good ones is sad. That means I was also a jerk which his hands in the air. Here’s my statement. If all 17 thousand people at the event took photos all freaking night and ended up with 1 good one, I’d be happy but you didn’t. All of you took crap photos because I’ve searched every photo-hosting site and I don’t see any photos from the event!
I snapped 1,000 photos a day and here’s how I did it. I looked up at the stage, the crowd, the building or whatever subject matter I was trying to capture and got an idea of what setting I needed for the camera. I then looked down at my camera and set the appropriate settings on manual mode. Then I shot the camera up in the air, took 1 second to stabilize my hands from shaking and then I shot the photo and then a 2nd one. This process of actually annoying people behind me with my hands up took 3 seconds. Half of the photos I took weren’t taken while in a crowd listening to a DJ set. They were taken in-between sets from grassy knolls or hanging from trees where I wasn’t in anyone’s way.
The important thing is that I went home and spent hours focusing on the quality shots.
On Sunday afternoon, I looked on Flickr and searched for “Ultra Music Festival” and organized by date. Every single photo for pages and pages was I. I was highlighted on Flickr as the person to go to for all UMF photos because I properly tagged and organized the photos. Every single photo was processed and, in my opinion, the cream of the crop.
I was very proud of my photos.
I shot a couple of videos and then took the time to write this blog post that explains how much the G11 sucks compared to the G10 at shooting video. So not only did I waste everyone’s time by shooting bad video, I took the time to warn others about the issue by blogging about it so another dedicated content producer wouldn’t make the same mistake.
For the Future:
From here on out, don’t waste your time. I’m serious. I can deal with your hands in the air or being distracted from a laser show with 1,500 Blackberry screens in the air but what I can’t stand is the fact that you all wasted your time and missed half of a $200 show trying to take pictures or video when the content is complete crap and goes to waste.
Number of SLRs at a typical “headliner performance” – 10. That’s such a low number. Most of the good photographers or real photographers had press badges and weren’t in the crowds.
I’m very happy with the shots I uploaded. Seriously. I don’t feel that my 10 minutes per one hour set spent setting up and shooting photos was a waste at all. In fact, I should have shot more but I was too busy dancing my ass off and enjoying the festival I spent over a thousand dollars to attend. That’s what it’s all about. Enjoy the moment, capture it quickly then go back to enjoying it. Spending all day staring into your screen is just wasting everyone’s time.
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