Noahm

I Ain't Just Another Photograph

Monday, 16th of March. It was 5pm and I was still at the International Center of Photography, on 43rd and 6th avenue, trying to send the last Ukulele Session I had done over the weekend with the impressive band Harlem Shakes at the Highline Ballroom (opening band for Bell X1).

It was around 5:25pm when I finally left the building and headed to the Madison Square Garden. I barely remember how I got there, I was just thinking about how big, loud and hard it was going to be. I got there about 15 minutes later, went through the first entrance and was told my pass had not arrived yet when I got to the will call window number 5.
An hour later, my pass had still not arrived. I started to feel my armpits sweating and I immediately called 10th Street Management. The woman told me that some of the passes hadn’t arrived yet but that they should be there in a minute at will call. She also specified she’d call me back as soon as she knew what was going on. An hour passed and I was still waiting for my pass. I was about to leave when someone else from 10th Street Management called me and told me my pass was at the Media Entrance, a block away from where I was. I ran up to 32nd and 8th avenue (I think) while I was cursing out in my head “f*** Madison Square Garden”. And things weren’t going to get better. I arrived at the media entrance, I gave my ID to one of the guys and he said he couldn’t find my name on the list. I insisted, told him who gave me the pass and who I was working for even though I didn’t even want to shoot the show anymore. But hey, you’ve gotta be insisting in this world right?
Two minutes later I had my ticket and my photo pass in my pocket, ready to go upstairs and shoot the last supporting band “Hinder”.

Anyways, let’s get to the good stuff ! I don’t think that there’s any good words to express what it feels like when you enter The Garden right before a band is going to take the stage. The pit was crowded, I was there pretty early so I had time to stare at the 20,000 people that were staring at one stage. How amazing is that?

Hinder took the stage and all the lights went down. And that’s when I almost threw my camera away, out of desperation and frustration: my lens’ AF wouldn’t work. Even when all the lights were on the lens struggled to focus, and made me miss the best picture ever when Austin (Hinder’s singer) was looking straight to me and was screaming like a pig, holding his microphone upon his head. Couldn’t focus. I was furious. I switched the focusing to “Manual Focusing” but of course it didn’t help, this is Hinder, not Bon Iver! They move all the time, it was almost impossible to get anything good. We were asked to go back downstairs after Hinder finished the third song. I was so frustrated that I can’t even remember how it sounded like.

I tried to fix my lens while we were all waiting downstairs for Mötley Crüe. I made friends with a nice photographer for the dutch magazine “Fury”.
We went back upstairs about an hour later. The venue was overcrowded. I try to make go in the pit but I was stopped by one of the guards: no photographer allowed in the pit. We had to shoot from the side, behind the crowd. I cursed out loud this time: f*** Madison Square Garden. A huge black curtain was hiding the scene. The crowd went crazy when the lights were turned down and we could see the shadows of Mick’s guitar through the black curtain. It was loud, but I can’t remember which was louder: the crowd or the heavy riffs and Tommy Lee’s drums. Vince came on stage as the curtain went down. The crowd started to raise their hands high, it felt like they knew they were giving me a hard time which got me pissed. I jumped when I heard a big noise coming out of the back of the stage: the fireworks! How can you have fireworks inside a venue? I have no idea. I just stared at the stage, then turned my head and stared at the crowd: it was just unreal. I wished I could stop the time and just walk through the venue and take as many pictures as I want, of every little detail of this gigantic place. But the time did not stop, that kind of thing happens only in movies like Cashback!

Mötley Crüe started with three rough songs, they were not there for the mainstream ballads they’re also known for: it was their show, their big big big big show. I was a bit disappointed I couldn’t shoot from the pit, there were amazing possibilities for great shots that night. I went back home after the third song as my seat was really far up and they wouldn’t let me go there with my cameras anyway. None of the photographers stayed for the show, all pissed by the “pit policy”, especially the photographer for Fury who had nothing else than a 28-90 (or something similar to that), he got absolutely nothing.

I hope my next experience with the Madison Square Garden will be better. At least now I know how it is. Big thanks to Jessi Hector for taking care of everything.

Hope you enjoy the images folks!

Noahm.