Time and Place: Flipping for the Biebs

This is a photo taken of Justin Bieber during his April 12th concert at Philips Arena. Most of the live music images I take are from the photo pit in front of the stage, but for this show we were asked to shoot from the soundboard, which is about 150 feet away from the performers. From this far back you become somewhat of a voyeur rather than an “invisible” participant when photographing an artist. I like to try and capture something compelling from this vantage point and Bieber had a pretty elaborate stage show with dancers. During this sequence of photos the dancers were doing flips and I was able to frame one of the photos with both dancers and Bieber in the middle. Because of the rapidly changing light I wasn’t sure I captured what I hoped until I got to look at the image on my computer. I like my photographs to somehow reflect the visual interpretation of what is going on musically and I think in many ways this image caught that.