When you think you may be the oldest person at a lengthy music concert, you have a lot of time to sit and to think. And to people-watch. A few weeks ago, when I went to San Antonio to see Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull perform, I was suddenly sad about where technology has taken us.
This was one of those gigantic Alamodome concerts, so large that there were DJ sets between the opening act (a baller named “J Balvin”) and the two headlining sets.
Of course, there were cellphones. Tens of thousands of them, in the hands of fans desperate to get a good still shot or to shoot some video to commemorate the performances. And why not? Many of our cellphones take better photos and video than point-and-shoot cameras did just a few years ago, and it’s a cheap, fast way to create a memento. Have you seen how much concert T-shirts cost?
The cellphone pics are instantly sharable, too. If you can get a decent wireless connection while surrounded by so many people, you can send your photos to the baby sitter and to friends, post them on Facebook or Instagram, then regale your friends on Monday morning with a hand-held concert slideshow.
What’s not to like?
Let’s start with the obvious. Unless you have amazing seats and incredible photographic timing, your concert photos and videos almost always look awful. They’re grainy and washed out; the stage lights at most concerts turn performers in your images into fuzzy mauve blobs.
That tiny LED flash on your phone? If you’re further than a few feet from the stage, it does absolutely nothing to improve your images and video.
And nobody cares about the photo you shot of an empty stage before the concert started unless you happen to be friends with lots of set designers.
At this Pitbull/Enrique Iglesias show, however, I saw even more egregious mobile device behavior, stuff that went from distracting to annoying and disruptive. It included:
The Long-Range Stage Selfie: I witnessed so many fans with seats high up in the stands mosey down the aisle to take a group selfie with their friends, positioning the camera so that the very distant stage was in the background. Of course, with flash enabled in the dark, this means the subjects of the photo will be washed out while the stage will appear as a distant blur. No matter! These aisle-blockers, who got in the way of people trying to watch the show with their own eyes, were incessant.
The Cellphone Tower: This happens at almost any concert now. An amateur videographer holds their phone up above the crowd, two-handed, to record video of an entire song. And maybe it's just a demographic reality in San Antonio, but it seemed like every phone I saw was one of those giant Galaxy Note devices or the new iPhone 6 Plus. Yet my concert ticket said nothing about my seat having an obstructed view.
The Tower of Tablet: The only thing worse than having your view blocked by a human cellphone tower is someone doing the same thing with an iPad. Yes, people take iPad photos and video at concerts. No, they don't seem to realize how silly they look.
The Flashlight Mode Field of Lights: Back in the day (ask your parents, kids), fans held up lighters during ballads at concerts. That's long been replaced by the flashlight mode on cellphones. During the Iglesias set, cellphone lights created a faux galaxy of stars in the crowd. It's actually a very nice effect as long as you're not the person surrounded by bright lights shining right next to your face.
I thought perhaps I might just have Old Man Crankiness setting in; instead of telling kids to get off my lawn, I’m evolving into the guy who yells at people to put their cellphones away at shows. But I know I’m not alone. Artists including Jack White have been expressing their displeasure at fans distracting themselves with digital toys at performances. The Eagles banned cellphones on their recent tour. In August at an Indiana show, Peter Frampton threw a disruptive fan’s cellphone.
But then, these are old guys like me. Enrique Iglesias did not seem at all annoyed by so many cellphones. In fact, he seemed tickled when a (perhaps intoxicated) fan came onstage with him and immediately started taking selfies and shooting video. Iglesias played along for what turned out to be a pretty funny fan interaction with the two taking turns capturing footage. And throughout the show, gigantic screens urged fans to check out videos online and to share their photos.
That seems to be where concerts are going, says Uri Bogler, vice president of marketing at Front Gate Tickets. As a frequent concert attendee, he’s seen all kinds of cellphone faux pas at shows, especially at festivals like the Austin City Limits Festival, where the giant photo frame in the middle of the park has become a popular destination.
“It’s become part of the festival landscape and part of the production,” Bogler said.
It’s become increasingly common for artists and concert venues to ask fans to share and hashtag their photos on services such as Instagram. Those filtered, low-resolution amateur photos? They could end up on the Jumbotron.
Bogler said he’s definitely witnessed the awkwardness of iPad concert photography and has had his view blocked enough that the screen becomes the show. “Sometimes you end up watching through the vantage point of someone’s camera,” he said.
Bogler says the big change is that artists have had to choose how to respond to cellphone photography at shows. Some musicians, he said, will ask fans not to use their phones. Others, especially DJs and electronic dance musicians, might take photos from the stage themselves and incorporate them into the show.
At ACL Live, cellphone photos and recordings are banned during tapings of “Austin City Limits,” but that rule tends to be lax before the show as fans snap photos of the familiar stage and post them online. And judging from the number of photos that still manage to get posted to places like Twitter and Facebook during shows, it’s not an easy rule to enforce.
Unless venues and artists outright ban digital devices (completely unlikely), it’s going to be a given that concert performances will be viewed by many behind the glowing screen of a mobile device. And probably right in front of you.
Bogler finds himself both annoyed by the practice and engaging in it himself sometimes. Confession: me too. Bogler says he sometimes shoots a short video clip to remind himself years from now, “Oh, yeah, I was at that show.”
But you know the funny thing? I’ve shot many photos and videos at concerts over the years. And they’re the photos and videos I tend to go back and view the least. The sound is usually muddy and the images never capture the energy of live music.
There are always better photos and videos shot by professional photographers of the same performance, readily available online.
They’re not selfies, but they’re often just a YouTube link away.
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