Access

 Access

by William Lulow

I have written many articles about photography, its various techniques and philosophies of why and how I work, but one indisputable fact about all of it is that you cannot make any images unless you are actually standing there and have a camera at your disposal. You need ACCESS to whatever it is you wish to photograph. It seems like a given axiom, but it is one that needs to be mentioned from time to time. You have to BE THERE to photograph anything!

I have often come across instances of people being somewhere important to document someone or some event, but not possessing the presence of mind or the ability to make a successful image. There are many cases of spectators witnessing an important events but how many would have the ability to keep their eyes glued to the camera’s viewfinder to record it properly?

We finally got a decent sunrise at our vacation spot on Longboat Key, Florida after a month of probably the worst weather since we have been coming here for the past eight years. So I decided to wake up early and go out to try to capture some sunrise light here. I was thinking about just going back to sleep, but my photographic instincts got the better of me and I got dressed, grabbed the gear and the tripod and went out to see what the light was like. I was actually a bit late, as it turned out, but still was able to capture some of that “first light” imagery. Here is one:

Make sure you can find the great egret wading in the water here. The light was just right to make a good picture of a kind of mundane bridge. The light says it all here. Camera was my Canon 90D, with the following settings: ISO 640, f/10 @ 1/125th of a second. There was also some post-production work done here to enhance the photo a bit.

Here is another photograph:

Whatever it is that you wish to photograph, first you need to be WHERE that is!

Photography of Musicians

I just about began my career in photography by photographing musicians on stage. It began with making images of Judy Collins in Denver, Colorado and expanded from there to such performers as The Grateful Dead, Chuck Berry, Rod Stewart and Muddy Waters. For images of performers, you definitely need to be in attendance AND have a decent spot from which to make your pictures:

Access like this is often hard to get because spots from which to make these kinds of images are difficult to procure:

In order to be on stage while musicians are performing, you need special access. In this case, the promoter of the Grateful Dead concert asked me to make these images. Still, I had to go through a clearance process with the road manager of the band as well as the security folks who were working the concert. In this case security was being provided by sections of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang, a rough group indeed. With all the clearance papers I had, I was only given about 15 minutes on stage with the band.

You can get clearance, of course, if you are working “on assignment” for a publication. In fact, these days, if you are not working for a known publication, you will almost certainly be denied access. So it always depends on who, if anyone, is hiring you and the ultimate use for the photographs. Access in these kinds of venues also depends on your knowledge of performers and the etiquette involved in stage performances.

So, it is all about being at the right place at the right time. Access means that you are in the stadium, at the performance AND ready to make images. It means that you are in the same room or location of the person, place or thing you wish to capture. You also need to be prepared to make the images you want. You need to know about lighting conditions, how to make your pictures sharp enough, how to print them correctly and even how to display them. But you cannot make any photographs at all unless you are there at the event or place!

So, I recently had a chance to photograph the Rolling Stones in concert. I had a “connection,” a person in a high position with Met Life. The band was performing at Met Life Stadium here in New Jersey. He thought he could get us a spot to shoot the band from close to or on the stage. Since the photographs were to be personal and not on assignment as indicated above, we were denied access under some kind of “proprietary information” rule. Security said that they were banning any camera with an interchangeable lens, which of course means any professional level camera. The iPhones could not be banned because just about every person has one. So, “No access – no pictures.”