I went to the OC Fair on Thursday July 17 to see 2 bands from my youth (and my present) X and Bad Religion. Maybe this is naive, but I was surprised to see Bad Religion headlining over X … But, according to the crowd, the bands were in the correct order. Bad Religion turned in up a notch and the crowd responded.

Luckily, I was able to score a photo pass for the show from a friend. He doesn’t read this blog, but I want to say thank you to him anyway – he always comes through for me and I really appreciate it!

The photo pit, the area between the stage and the barricade, was SUPER TIGHT on this shoot. Usually there is enough room to move around a little bit in that area. You can change positions, squeeze by the other photographers who are looking to do the same thing … Not at the Pacific Amphitheater at the Fair. Once you squeezed yourself behind the barricade, you stayed where you were, no chance to move. It was so tight that my toes were touching the front of the stage and my heels were touching the barricade. TIGHT! I know, wah, wah, cry me a river … During X, I planted myself in front of Billy Zoom.

I’m glad I brought my 75 mm lens for the Olympus … It allowed me to get a couple of Exene and Joe Doe too. I’m not sure why I feel the need to type this right now, but I do, and I will … Yes, that one photo of John Doe with the rope-ladder in the right side of the image is cropped. I cropped the shit out of it because another photog’s head was in it. I try very hard to fill the frame when I shoot and I do not crop much, but this one is cropped. OK? Sure, I could crop out the ladder too, but I kind of like it, in it’s weird, distracting way …

For Bad Religion, I thought I was positioning myself in front of Greg Graffin, but it turned out that I was in front of Jay and the new guitar player. I’ve never had luck shooting Bad Religion … I blame it on ME and the fact (or thought) that the band likes RED stage lights and RED stage lights play havoc on digital cameras … RED!