Zurich, 5 December 2010
I made the request to shoot Ke$ha pretty last-minute, thinking that with the popularity in the UK and the press hype in Zurich it would be a different, but exciting show. Unfortunately this one didn’t live up to expectations at all…
We were not allowed pit access, and told to shoot from soundboard or a DJ booth at the side. Then we were given the option of shooting from the crowd which seemed better. Having battled rows of 15 year-olds and making it almost to the front, I was ‘told’ by security that we were not allowed to shoot from there… I tried to get them to understand that we’d been given permission, but in the end I gave up and battled my way back out to work out another plan. I found the extremely helpful Toby, who got hold of the TM who gave permission to shoot from “anywhere”… great but a bit late. So I opted for balcony shots (Stage right) as this was a vantage point that was closed to the public for the evening (given the crowd was pretty small, sorry to say).
All shots on the 5DII as it was the only body I brought, but I am glad I took the 1.4x extended as it gave me the reach with the 70-200mm. The disadvantage was I was shooting at f/4.0 and needed to bump the ISO to 4000 in order to keep shutters above 1/250 for the most part.
