Recently I had missed out on taking photos of two bands that I really love, and I think I’m about to miss out on a third this weekend. It hurts a whole lot more because I choose to take photos of the bands I don’t just like or love but obsess over. That’s not a bad thing. You know, I’m just like a teenager who sticks up posters of all their favourite bands and relates some lyrics to their own situation. The music I listen to is more than background music or tunes to just enjoy; they provide themes to my own moods, energy levels and even identity.
From time to time I do miss out on photographing my favourite bands, either from a lack of media access to their shows or being unable to make it to the gig for some reason. The first band I missed out on photographing was The Living End, who I have loved since I was 10. If you think teenage obsessions with bands were big when I was 10 The Living End was my whole life. They were my young autistic special interest who I not just listened to but soaked up any information about. It was really heartbreaking to not get a photo pass to one of their gigs. I even wished I could have loved another band as a child over them; one that wasn’t so hard to get media access to.
The second band was The Ape. My new favourite band and introduction to the music of Tex Perkins. I was also going to travel to Melbourne for the first time if only the tickets to the gig weren’t so expensive because the flight was also going to cost a lot. It was kind of the next big step for me because when my sister was talking about going to the airport I had so much anxiety and felt so overwhelmed by all the information being told to me my head plummeted to the table, and I was shaking until I contacted one of the band members to see if I was allowed to get in to take photos, and get a plus one for my sister because the tickets were really expensive. I’m still not sure if I was allowed to take photos or not, but as the tickets came with meals and drinks and it seemed unlikely I could get on the guest list and eventually I started to become anxious about going, I decided to mope at home and play video games instead.
The next gig I applied for media access to is Rock the Gate, a concert standing against coal seam gas mining. One of the acts playing is Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses. The headliner is Pete Murray and that would probably really help expose my photography to a wider audience, but I haven’t heard back from anyone regarding my application to photograph the gig yet and so I have little hope I’ll hear back before this weekend.
Last night I noticed I didn’t take my missed opportunity to see and photograph The Ape well and by the time I was in bed full blown depression hit with the occasional suicidal ideation. Now I thought my next depressed episode will be over Centrelink post the two interviews I just had, which I planned to post about in ‘My Second Most Recent Breakdown’ but the interview didn’t turn out to be so bad. I sat down for another capacity assessment to see if I was still eligible for the disability support pension and surprisingly the assessor made me feel like I was. One thing I didn’t mention to them however was the fact that I get so down and depressed when things don’t work out for my photography.
That’s how I feel now: I feel like I will never get another opportunity to photograph another show that I need media access to and I even feel like I don’t have the skills to do it should that opportunity arise again. Although, I seem to be doing all right when taking photos of my cats and dog. There was a little black and white photo challenge on Facebook where you had to post one black and white photo a day, and so I decided to take about 200 black and white photos of my pets and now I’m posting one or two each day to my wall.
The skills are still there but my confidence isn’t and since missing out on photographing The Ape for a fourth time I’ve lost interest in going out to gigs. I’ve basically just been playing my Xbox One and getting most of my self-confidence back through playing video games, and I’m pretty good so will stick at it. It’s become my new special interest. It is all I think about, read about, desire and of course, play.
So yes, the next step is learning to take defeat and still staying with my photography. There are so many bands to photograph but like I said I choose to photograph my upmost favourite. The bands I always think about, listen to and buy camera lenses worth +$1000 for just to take photos of individual band members alone. I actually did that, after the last The Ape gig I was at I decided that I needed a wider angle lens, which I did have but left at home. I bought it after I kept cutting off the heads of guitarists with my usual lens.
On the bright side I will still be able to photograph my favourite bands that don’t require media access. I have two opportunities to see River of Snakes next week. The next couple of gigs I need media access to would Gyroscope at Oxford Art Factory and the big one for me will be Datsuns at The Metro. Both gigs are coming up in the next couple of weeks.
I still feel defeated. I’m still depressed of course. It will run its course and I’ll recover soon. I find the best way to deal with it is let the emotions and thoughts come and do their damage and by the end I’ll forget about ever feeling this way. When I first got the idea to go to Melbourne and take photos of The Ape I had that super inhuman level of over confidence which almost led to me spending $170 on tickets alone and thinking it was a sacrifice worth taking. But then I came back down to Earth and thought it would be better to wait for them to come back to Sydney so I can see them for $20-$30 again.
I should probably mention that I may have missed out on photographing two of my favourite bands but I did get to take photos of my mate Davey Lane and after I put the photos online got a post reach just five views short of 4000. That was massive. That’s the highest it’s ever been, and I didn’t even need to pay Facebook money to show my posts to more people.
Maybe it’s a good thing that I don’t get many opportunities to photograph bands this late in the year. It’s heading into the Christmas season and I like to spoil my nephews and nieces.
So, I’ll keep doing my band photography. The harsh reality is you can be doing this for 20 years and sometimes you’ll miss out on gigs that you just assume will be easy to get into, and sometimes you’ll get into huge arena shows…or The Metro in Sydney.
For now I’m just going to continue to feel sorry for myself, because depression.
PDA Rebellion 