Misdirection

I was sitting in the last row of the orchestra at Alice Tully last night and, at one point during a performance, the woman to my left leaned back and loud-whispered to an usher, "There's someone taking pictures down there!", gesturing to her right dramatically. No sooner had the dutiful usher trotted off to investigate the situation did the woman to my left whip out her iPhone and take a photo herself.

Bold, madam.

[That would be seat Z104, if anyone from Lincoln Center is reading.]

During the final bows, my tricky left-neighbor took another iPhone photo, and this time, the usher told her to stop, so she first took the picture and then turned off the phone. If I were the usher, I might have said, "Ma'am, I'm gonna need to delete that photo..." and then mistakenly deleted her contacts. Simultaneously, the woman to my right busted out her camera equivalent of Zach Morris' cell phone and took a flash photo! The usher asked her to stop, at which point she implored, "But I'm a critic." and waved scribbled notes on her program in his face. (Keep in mind, this was all happening while the Chamber Music Society was playing.) I was going to point out that, as a Publicity Professional, I can safely say we were not in press seats, but I thought it best not to cause a scene while on the new hall's maiden voyage.

Call me a prude but I, not unlike Patti LuPone, do not like it when audience members take photos during performances. My real problem is that rules are rules; if I'm obeying them, you should be too. There's a music blogger in the city who constantly posts illegal concert photos on his blog; I'm sure he'll have a few posted from last night at Alice Tully soon enough. If I worked at a presenter who gave him press tickets, I would be infuriated by his lack of respect for the artists and the houses. I'm also the person who would have deleted the iPhone contacts, so perhaps I'm not the best acid test for such things.

On the train ride home, I found myself wondering why I was being so rigid. What is actually the problem with audience members taking non-flash photos at performances? Flashes distract performers, but iPhone/Blackberry/camera phone photos are very discreet: they're silent and flashless. A second potential problem is that the artists don't have approval of photos that are taken during concerts then posted who knows where, but shouldn't performers be thrilled that someone was enjoying the experience of them playing enough to want to preserve a memory of it?  We take photos when we like something, when we want to remember something or when we want to share our personal experiences with others. With that in mind, how can taking photos at concerts be against the rules? And if the photos end up on blogs or Flickr, or videos are posted on YouTube or Vimeo, what damage is done? If anything, a positive concert experience at your venue is being advertised. By prohibiting photos, presenters are essentially preventing audiences from doing the viral marketing leg-work for them.

I've personally been known to Photoshop my vacation photos, so I understand artists' fear of not having any semblance of approval of live concert photography. Perhaps one solution is providing a gallery of water-marked high-resolution photos from every concert taken by an in-house professional photographer, advertised in the program and available to all ticket-buyers. That way, if someone who may or may not be on the official press list wanted to blog about the concert the next day - or simply e mail a photo to a grandparent in Michigan - he or she could procure a great shot without having to ask the venue or artist's permission. The photos would be high-quality, and presumably the artist could approve or not approve them directly after the concert.

A second option is to allow photos and video during one piece only, be it the first piece on the program or the encore. The artist would know when he or she would be filmed/photographed, and could mentally prepare for it. This, of course, may prove to be a flawed system, but I have to believe if you give people a legal window to photograph, they'll be less inclined to break the rules during the rest of the concert.