Put your hands in the air…No, not your phone!
WORDS: Jessica Howkins
Over the years, technology has developed in ways we would have never imagined. We’ve gone from Snake, texts and calls strictly phones to phones that do everything for us, including taking some pretty great high quality photos and videos. Don’t get me wrong, it’s absolutely brilliant, especially from a journalist’s point of view but here’s a message to you all, you don’t need it all of the time, especially at a concert.
Sure, take your phone and tell your mum or dad to come and pick you up, use it to arrange where to meet friends, take one or two photos but for the love of Gordon, don’t watch the entire thing through a screen.
There’s a reason why there are photo pits at concerts and why you need a photography press pass to get in there. Gig photographers are people who have been working their backsides off to get where they are, they want their pictures featured in the latest music magazines, they want their photographs to be used on the artists’ websites etc.
Why on earth should they bother when they could just stand in the crowd and take photos of the entire gig on their brand new iPhones? Everybody else seems to do it and try to pass it off as ‘photography’. It’s not photography, it is taking 500 pictures or filming the entire concert of a band you have paid to see and annoying the other people around you.
If it was the person in front of you watching the entire show through their phone, you would be pretty miffed off too. Let’s put it this way, if people wanted to pay so much for a concert, they are going to watch the band play LIVE, if they wanted to watch it through a screen, they would wait until the next day when some other idiot who has filmed the entire thing on their phone has uploaded it to YouTube.
Think about the short people too, it’s hard to see as it is. Don’t make it any harder by waving your arms in the air trying to get the best shot of the bum of the guitarist you fancy.
It is beyond infuriating for everyone behind, to just only be able to see the band they paid to see through your screen. Another thing, it’s alright to send a Snapchat to your friends to show them where you are or give them a snippet of the band if they couldn’t make it but please don’t Snapchat the entire concert.
I can guarantee 300 Snapchat videos to your story will help you remember the night of ‘Came to see my favourite band omg
If you’re one of the people who do the above, please for the sake of all of the people who pay to watch the band in person, stop. If you’re one of the people that moans if the people around you are making you move about by the mosh pits or by them head-banging or heck even having a good time (Shock! Yes, it can happen if you put the phone down) then once again, stop.
We all want our little memoirs to remember that time we went to go see our favourite band but keep the ticket, get a tour shirt or other merch, anything but that.
Leave the photo taking to the people with the passes, leave the videos to the crew, if you want to watch it through a screen, stay at home and watch it on YouTube – stop ruining it for the people who want to have a good time.
