TexasCHLforum.com

There's a thread in General CHL - and a comment was made about venues (AA Center) confiscating cameras and escorting you to the parking lot.

One of the reasons is that many artists want to "own" everything, including how their images are captured.

I was fortunate enough to attend a Toby Keith concert (one of many) at Continental Airlines Arena in NJ - at first they wouldn't let me in with my camera, so I just kept going to different entrance gates until I could find someone who I could convince my "camera" was not professional grade (ha). I got off a couple (okay about 250) fair snapshots of Toby, Miranda Lambert and various band members - here are a couple, including one that made Toby cringe (according to his guitar player, Rich Eckhardt - to whom I sold the rights for a few of my pics from that night for use on his website). Said photo is the last in the group here

grumble wrote:....including one that made Toby cringe (according to his guitar player, Rich Eckhardt - to whom I sold the rights for a few of my pics from that night for use on his website). Said photo is the last in the group here

Well maybe he wouldn't cringe if he could do a better impersonation of Gene Simmons.



Great shots by the way.

A bunch of years ago I won a radio call in to have front row seats and a backstage tour for a Terri Clark concert. We met outside the arena with the radio personality that acted as our chaperone and were shuffled into the concert very early. Some mention may have been made about not bringing cameras, but I never heard it, so I had my Minolta XG9 with a huge flash attached, slung around my neck in plain sight throughout the tour and concert.

Toward the end of the concert those of us who had been designated for a "personal" meet got signaled to leave our seats and were escorted backstage where we waited in the wing just of stage left. Terri was rocking out, and I don't even remember the song, and turned toward us in the wing. I had my camera on and the flash all charged up, so I kind of gave her a sign that I wanted to snap a picture, and she nodded, so I did.

Great shot, but I have never shown it to anyone except family and close friends, because the show security guy and her publicist, both of whom almost tackled me after I took the shot told me I had better not. Of course that didn't bother me much, but what did was while they had me dragged off to the side asking why I had a camera when they were not allowed and all that, I missed the "personal" meet with Terri. No other repercussions, but I did write a letter to the venue, her tour, and the radio station, pointing out that my very large camera and flash attachment were too obvious to sneak in, as I was accused of, and if they had been doing their jobs someone should have noticed them. I also sent a copy of the picture to "her."

Nobody ever answered.

One of these days I have to scan that picture into my computer.

I have never tried to win one of those backstage contests since, the whole thing is a cattle call and not "personal" at all - the only thing that made it worthwhile was the front row seats, and we were actually in the third row of some very uncomfortable folding chairs.