Photo by Jeremy Breningstall.
I was going to leave this as an aside for the pod, and since the last time(s) I had decided to drop this and leave for the venues/other punters/bands to sort out, if they cared.
If you've ever been to a gig in Shanghai you'll have noticed that event photographers and overenthusiastic hobbyists with expensive toys often use them as their personal studios. They generally break several rules that are accepted, and even enforced everywhere else. For example:
* No flash photography at shows.
* No taking pictures of bands or punters without permission first.
* Don't annoy or block people who paid money to see the show.
The Pet Conspiracy show was particularly bad for this. It pretty much killed my enjoyment of the first two bands as I was constantly looking at them as they buzzed around in front of me and tried to directly take my picture continuously. Despite my best attempts to keep out of their shots and concentrate on the show - there I f*cking am, in a gallery posted at Shanghaiist.
The douchey photog in the black Antidote shirt was on fine form, boogie-ing away as he worked and running around like hyperactive kindergarten kid. At one point free t-shirts were thrown into the crowd and as Jake bent down to pick one up, that guy literally ran across to jump in front and whip it out of his reach, before throwing it back to the DJs to be thrown out to someone else. It's like he had a one man mission against the paying audience. I see from this gallery that the guy strutting around the crowd using a flash next to people's faces must have been Kosuke Sato.
Perhaps I'm getting everyone mixed up. I know, why don't you all post your headshots and resumes at one site so we can all know who the top party photographers are.
But really, that's enough guys, please. I saw photographer web2asia of Flickr at the show with his camera and he somehow managed to not get in the way at all. It can be done.
