The Big 4 concert started with Anthrax and a preview of both the good, the bad and the ugly about shooting this show. I’ll start with the good and move into the bad and ugly since overall I really had a great time shooting this show. This was just my second time shooting Anthrax and I started out on Scott Ian’s side of the stage, thinking that I would be able to work my way back to the middle and then over during songs 2 and 3. That didn’t happen but luckily, Anthrax really used the whole stage and each of the band members roamed from around allowing me to catch them when they were over where I was shooting.

Myother advantage was the inclusion of the 300mm f/4 lens that I packed last-minute just in case the band members stayed back on the big stage. This allowed me to shoot across the stage and still fill the frame with the musicians. One last word on Anthrax before the photos… they really looked like they were having fun, and that is so much more enjoyable to shoot than when the band just looks like they are going through the motions.

All images were taken with Nikon D3 and D700 cameras with 70-200mm f/2.8, 300mm f/4 and 24-70mm f/2.8 on Hoodman RAW CompactFlash cards.

The real fun starts when I started to get in close with the 300mm.

It really did seem like everyone was having a great time. Band and the fans…..

Now I mentioned earlier in this post that not everything was great. The biggest problem as a shooter was the sheer number of people in the photo-pit. There were a ton of photographers, security and some other random folks who seemed to be just wondering around. Once in the photo it was nearly impossible to move around to get different angles or move at all. Combine that with an over zealous security guy who wanted photographers to wait until the band takes the stage causing a massive photographer jam and there was the video guys getting in every shot… more on them in the Slayer post.

Then there is the photographer who was shooting on stage, and yes, I know his name and who he is and how famous…. blah blah blah… the thing is this.. He gets to shoot the whole show. He has no restrictions. Why the hell did he walk around the stage for the first three songs getting in all of our shots.