It’s my fourth year shooting Warped Tour and also my fourth time shooting All Time Low (also realized I hadn’t seen them for two years until now). It’s always a fun challenge to shoot All Time Low because they are so energetic. But their photo pit is almost always crowded, and we are at Warped Tour nonetheless. So it was a quest to move among other photographers, to find a good angle to photograph them, to try and get a unique shot. Especially in an outdoor environment like Warped Tour where everyone shoots under broad daylight, without the help of the amazing lighting designers, photographers tend to get *similar* photos so the composition or the subject becomes more important in the photograph.
An All Time Low photo pit is a pretty vicious place cause it’s CROWDED. I also realized just shooting close ups of the band members wouldn’t work cause it gets sorta boring. And honestly, after three shoots, I think I have enough single close-ups of the each of them. So when the band got closer together, I was thinking “OMG I NEED TO GET THE FOUR OF THEM IN ONE SHOT!!!” I happened to be right in front of the stage and so I did what I don’t usually do, until this year’s Warped Tour — stretched my arms and held up the camera. Yes, the “Hail Mary”! I was sooo worried that it wouldn’t focus right BUT IT DID! The cherry on top is probably their expressions too. I saw the review and I thought, “adjfjasdl;fkj”
Okay, there’s some sentimental value to this “full band shot” because….
I had a similar photo from a few years ago, where the four of them are in the frame and my friend got it signed for me haha. One of my most prized possessions actually (another is a playbill signed by Jennifer Garner, if you are wondering).
P.S. I started write these Behind the Shot posts to share what I was thinking when I took a particular photograph… hope they are interesting…
P.P.S. I was reminded a lot of Todd Owyoung while writing this post, stuff like finding the angle, differentiating yourself from the others — things that I have been trying to do may seem like reflex now, but I actually picked up through Todd’s super informative blog. And I totally did not realize this until I broke the thought process down in words. So thank you Todd! :)
For Warped Tour shooting tips, definitely check out this post from Todd too!