Emo band Hawthorne Heights charge photographers $150 to shoot band

Being a live music photographer might sound like a glamorous life, getting up, close and personal with musicians that many others are paying good money to see, but it’s not without its many flaws. Often annoying fans, as well as being annoyed by security themselves, couple this with the sad fact that much of the labour is unpaid nowadays and it’s quite literally a pretty thankless task.

American emo outfit Hawthorne Heights, however, have come up with a new scheme for budding photographers that has gone down as well as they might have first hoped.

As The Music Network report, the band recently gave “aspiring photographers” a chance to, in their words, “Come take pictures of us all day at Warped Tour”. They’ll even be so generous and “take your pictures and put them on our Instagram page, and give you full credit for it”. All that and possibly more for the princely sum of just $150.

Needless to say, such an offer was soon criticised by professional and amateur photographers alike, as well as by fans of the band themselves. The group later deleted the original post but remained adamant that what they were offering was more of an “internship” than anything.

“It feels like the band haven’t quite understood why photographers are even at their gigs,” said Best Fit’s own photographer Howard Melnyczuk on hearing the news. “Yes gigs are really fun to photograph but we’re not there because they are unmissable subjects for our shots. When I’m down there in the pit I feel who I’m actually shooting for are the fans who couldn’t make it.”

“From the amount of audience members and even security who ask me ‘how do I get into this?’ I’d have to say it’s not a big surprise sadly,” added Best Fit Photo Editor Jason Williamson. “This is on top of the increasing amount of release forms and the general demonifying of live music photography going on these days.”

The group are also giving fans the chance to “hang out” with the band at Warped Tour for a mere $250.