Photographers Do Not Belong In The Club

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Photographers Do Not Belong In The Club

The sign outside of famed  Berlin Techno Club Berghain

Words from our good friend Brad over at In The Deep End.

I’m not sure where this concept that a night club wasn’t complete without a weekly photographer came from. Now, I’m quite sure it all started when the digital camera erupted on to the scene. Of course, when you’ve got approximately two hundred images to work with per night, the average patron is going to start taking pictures with a bunch of random dickheads and then cringe about it the next day.

There is the first problem we’ll encounter in this rant though, why were people allowed to take cameras in to clubs anyway? It’s the one place you can go, once or twice a week, and act like a complete animal. Who the hell wants to see photographic evidence of them being fucked beyond recognition, especially on your favorite clubs website. Unfortunately, according to most peoples Facebook profile pictures, the answer was. Everyone wanted that evidence.

Two girls show off their good side/s at a club in Adelaide, Australian Club

I’m sure that when a camera was a luxurious commodity, along with it’s film that might allow you twenty seven pictures (on a sober night at best), you would be much more picky about who made it into the frame. Or on the contrary, you would just take a picture and hope for the best. None of those pictures that look about as real as a Madame Tussauds wax work, not only due to the excessive make up these “attractive” girls wear, but their disgusting pouts and hand on hip poses too. Which of course took a few takes to look “facebook ready”.

So anyway, the digital camera has just found it’s way into any middle class teenagers hand. But they keep on losing or breaking their cameras, and their parents get shitty, reminding them that it cost them an arm and a leg and they only bought it a few weeks ago for their birthday. Never fear though, the local goon promoter was more than happy to use the same camera and take pictures of everyone. This was great, it meant people didn’t need to bring their precious cameras out to clubs any more, yet they could still cherish those forgotten memories forever. Or at least until their hard drive crashed or they were too lazy to transfer data when they got a new computer.

Now, I’m not quite sure when the actual transition happened between amateur nob happy snapping, and another amateur nob, this time with a good camera, doing the exact same thing, and having the privilege of calling himself a photographer. I think it came around the same time as Facebook started to take off, because now people could actually be tagged in photos. The online equivalent of a name and shame. So naturally, the really ugly people wanted to look better, and no matter how much money they spent on clothes, that $200 Olympus just wasn’t going to make you look good.

Then of course, came the copious Facebook albums and tags spread across the once pure plains of the social network, and consumed every socialites mid week study/work routine more so than ever before. So photographers started to apply all these ridiculous effects and watermarks to poison everybody even further, to ensure that people were no longer just uploading a picture. It was a “insert photographer name in shit font here” advertisement. The watermarks soon grew to gigantic proportions, and some clubs going as far as taking 1/2 of the image for their own branding.

Although for a moment hilarious, is this a photo you want to remember forever?

Some of the photographic effects I saw were hilarious, over processed to shit, making people look like over tanned Lepers with plastic skin (Nothing against Lepers if you’re reading this). This was never meant to be a post to zero out specific clubs or events. So I won’t be posting any pictures of anybody, or anywhere, but I’m sure you can relate to this wherever you are in the world. Because we’ve all seen a few too many pictures of a hot babe in a slinky American Apparel tutu, that could potentially be a 10. However she lost 5 points for being absolutely off her tits, and another 2 because the photographer caught her at the most awkward moment in her dance routine.

My point is, let’s leave the photography to the professionals. Sometimes it’s totally necessary to capture the moment at a big concert, event. Hell, even at a club. But you amateur douchebags with expensive cameras are making everyone look bad, and if they don’t look bad it’s because they’re being prudes and waiting for the “photographer” to come past again so they can get another carbon copy of the previous pose. Perhaps with a slightly steeper head lean.

– Brad / In The Deep End

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