Throw out the script and find a new angle tonight. Good composition is when it looks like the person who took the photograph was drunk. Looking through the viewfinder isn’t needed. Don’t look through photos as you take them. Believe in luck. It’s a party. Why are you so serious? Have a couple of shots of tequila. Your job is to find the person that you will explore all the angles with tonight.
If you’re good at taking photos this may be the last time that you get to shoot whatever you want. Next festival season you might already be high in demand. So bask in the twilight. These are the glory days. You get to shoot from the fan perspective instead of perching from VIP removed from the action. Right now it’s not a job yet. Shoot it with joy. Treat the festival like its photography school. Your teachers are the thousands of fans that have come here for the same reason you did. Except they brought suntan lotion not a camera. They will remember the festival through your eyes. Who do YOU have photographic access to here that no one else does? Your girlfriend? Your homies? Make them your heroes. Don’t let me be the photographer that comes along and takes better pictures of your girlfriend than you do. If you can’t document your friends and make them look like Gods… Then what makes you think you can document Beyoncé? Especially when she’s walking by and you’re nervous and her publicist is shoving you out of the way? Nah, photograph the people you came with… Photograph them with love. Love is that crucial ingredient in photography that no one talks about. If your friends get self conscious tell them that you’re just testing the light. Use their reluctance as “reluctance practice” for the future. Photograph any new festival friends that you make along the way. Photograph the smaller bands on the smaller stages. One day they may be the bigger bands on the bigger stages. And why are you trying so hard to get a backstage pass? Is it because those are the kind of photos you saw in Rolling Stone? So before you’ve even started a career you’re already trying to imitate others? You’re already trying to kill what makes you original before you’ve even had a chance to find out what that is? What do you think you will find backstage? It’s only photographers trying to get the same festival shots as everyone else. You have the enviable opportunity right now. You can capture the fans sweat and passion with intensity. Because you are one of them. Next year you’ll be IG famous. You’ll only have a few minutes to “shoot the fans” before security whisks you back to VIP. So right now make the people that surround you the stars of your photography. Make us industry photographers jealous by the sheer authenticity of it. It will be the difference people will be able to feel. It will be the reason why next year someone will hire you. They will hire you to do the thing you will no longer be able to do now because you’ll be helicoptering in with the band. You’ll be tasting catered food. You’ll be trying to shoot people that you can’t take backstage. Fun girls that don’t have the right wristband. And you don’t yet have the ‘escort’ laminate yet.
That’s why when I met Willa at Rosa’s birthday party I sort of freaked out. She was wearing an oversized plaid men’s button-down which revealed her dowdy worn out bra. She didn’t give a fuck. Not in that I’m-better-than-you sort of way but in that genuine my-parents-taught-me-I’m-amazing-and-I-believe-it sort of way. Any girl that was in a baby Gap commercial as a toddler has got to feel destined for greatness, no? And here we are now taking pictures and she won’t stop laughing. She’s ruining my photos. Actually, it’s me. My incompetence is at fault. I just can’t take decent smiling photos. Nightlife photography has ruined me with it’s endless parade of ‘head-mistress’ underlooks. Now that there’s authentic energy in front of me I’m a bumbling fool. You’re only as good as the last model, they say. And of course Willa will save me. When people see these photos they’ll say “that’s such a good picture” and I will get the lions share of the credit. Then I will land the next job.