Looking back at this picture above taken at a Citizen Cope concert nearly a year ago and I’m reminded at how far my skills as a photographer have come in the last 12 months. I look at pictures shot 6 months ago and laugh at how terrible they were. I guess constant improvement is a good thing. There is one area of my photography that is hard to improve upon and that’s photography of events such as weddings, concerts and large scale landscapes of crowds that you’d have in a club or festival. For a photographer, the most challenging thing about getting the shot is an ever changing landscape such as the case with sports, bird and concert photography. Lighting is ever-changing, the crowd is moving fast and the performers are all over the place. The same goes for photographing a football game or birds. It’s just very challenging and the gear you need is pricey.
I’d like to practice more and I look forward to concerts and sporting events as a way to bring my best gear and really capture something special only for the purpose of impressing myself later back at the hotel and the occasional Twitter reply of someone saying how cool that photo was I took.
Along the same lines, I despise everyone else at these events with their insanely crappy point & shoot cameras or camera phones. Their hands in the air with camera phones makes my shot look bad and their photos never ever come out. I wrote about this phenomenon of shitty concert photography here. Of course, I also despise my photos that came out of last year’s Ultra Music Festival. A lot of people liked them but I think they’re just okay. This year, I was going to blow those photos out of the water.
I bought a pass to Ultra and, through a connection of a personal friend, I tracked down the person responsible for allowing SLRs into the event. I wrote them via email:
My only request is if there is a possibility of a press badge not to save money but so I have the ability to use a professional camera setup (aka SLR). In the past, I’ve only been able to bring in a point & shoot and it severely limits my ability to shoot the event even though the photos may seem SLR quality, they’re not.
Is there such an access that doesn’t allow me backstage access and only allows for an SLR compared to point & shoot? That’s my only request. If the only option is a press badge, can you please set me in the right direction to acquire one of these?
After a few weeks, the press group representing UMF responded:
Thanks so much for reaching out.
Unfortunately, we’re unable to accommodate your request due to limited press tickets and passes.
I replied again:
Thanks anyway for responding. So you’re confirming that DSLRs are not allowed at ultra?
She says:
Correct
So that’s that. I began doing more research because it seems to be a trend that every event venue and promoter HATES cameras. They despise cameras and I wanted to find out why. I had a hunch that was confirmed after navigating hundreds of forum posts on various photography enthusiast blogs
From user submagination on the popular photography site, dpreview:
The reason that a dSLR will be banned where normal point and shoot cams are not is that the event location doesn’t want people to be selling photos of their events.
That’s almost always the entire reason why.
It forces you to buy from the vendor there and it eliminates any chances of you distributing shots and making money from it (and by extension reducing potential income from the location itself).
Since it’s a privately owned location, there’s little you can do short of asking if there’s any special access you’re allowed to obtain/petition for.
Actually, the entire thread on that site was the best I found for offering a good explanation as to why SLRs simply aren’t allowed at events. So, for the sole purpose that I can’t sell images is the reason they’re limiting what I can bring. The chicken / egg argument is really what’s on my mind though. It seems that the only way to photograph concerts with anything more than a point & shoot is to be approved as media / press. However, the only way I’ll ever get sponsored by a legitimate and reputable media organization is if I have a portfolio of event photography.
How does anyone break into this field?
I have zero intention of ever making money as a photographer. It would be nice to be able to fund the purchase of new gear with a few gigs here and there or perhaps selling of stock photography or framing some of my pictures and selling them at the local flea market but, beyond that, I really don’t intend on making a career out of this. This is why I always write event organizers stating that I’ve bought a ticket, I don’t want any special treatment and I’d like to only be allowed to bring an SLR to progress my hobby and improve my skills as a photographer. Besides, even if John Smith is given a media badge because he works at Rolling Stone, what’s stopping him from selling any unused images his editors don’t want? He has backstage pictures of a popular DJ smoking pot and he sells them to TMZ for 10 grand anonymously. How does that work? Is there an Ultra press police that finds out who took the photo?
The fact that events don’t allow SLRs is an understanding if you just show up but when a hobbyist who promises to not use a flash or crazy lenses and has bought a pass asks politely to bring an SLR for their own personal photo collection, there should be some sort of honorary stamp you get for being a good decent person who has the courtesy to ask.
What event organizers don’t realize is that photography has taken a leap beyond the capacity of big body cameras with large sensors and you can get nearly SLR size sensors in very small camera bodies. New cameras from Panasonic and Nikon have super large CMOS sensors with ultra fast glass and can achieve phenomenal photos in a body that fits in your front or back pocket.
With that said, I’ll have my Olympus 4/3rds camera on me with two small lenses (one with zoom and one with a fast aperture). I’ll carry my “point and shoot” into UMF this year and achieve photos that are 10x the quality of what I shot last year (you can see those photos here). I’m not a professional. I’m a hobbyist. I’d like to one day be allowed to publish photos in Rolling Stone but will never have the opportunity if groups continue to shut me out simply for wanting to bring an SLR. Small bodied cameras continue to improve each year and I’ll get by on these cameras for now. My Olympus PEN E-PL2 can outpace last year’s Canon G11 in every way in a body that’s smaller and more pocketable. I hope that festivals like UMF never catch on to that and instead ban cameraphones and flashes cause, not only are their images not sellable but they’re annoying as hell to real photographers who want to capture moments and improve their skillset.
If there are any event photographers reading this, I’d love to hear your feedback and tips on how you got started as an event photographer for concerts and festivals.