I am nearly recovered from Lollapalooza and I figured it is time to get some photos up. Lollapalooza was a total shit show and after the first day I didn’t see how I could possibly make it through the weekend. Fortunately day one was the worst of it and unfortunately I didn’t get a lot of shots on days two and three.

After shooting a few bands and hundreds of crowd shots on day one I returned to Lollapalooza a bit late on day two after sleeping through my alarm. When I got down there I photographed Death From Above 197s and then tried to go to one of the VIP lounges. My pass wasn’t working and I spent nearly two hours getting a replacement. By that time it was nearly 6pm and I made it just in time to shoot Ween and then head over to shoot The Pretty Reckless which I heard was a wild show. After that I ran into the Sailor Jerry team and they got me into the artist area and I hung out there for a while before I called it a day. On day three I had a bunch of bands I wanted to shoot but the earliest band, Cage The Elephant, did’t start till 5:15 so I didn’t get down there until about 5pm. After their set I ran over to another stage to shoot Best Coast. During their first song the sky exploded and I got soaked. I wasn’t really prepared for the rain and I didn’t want my shit to get ruined so I got the fuck out of there and that was the end of my Lollapalooza trip.

In total I shot only 7 bands (plus Girl Talk) and none of the big headliners because they had bullshit photo waivers that I refused to sign. Those bands were The Kills, Crystal Castles, Death From Above 1979, Ween, The Pretty Reckless, Cage The Elephant, Best Coast and Girl Talk.

Not going to get into write ups on all the bands but I should mention a few things. First of all, Cage The Elephant were amazing. Their front man was running all over the stage and in the crowd and they really, really impressed me. They just gained themselves a new fan. I was also very impressed by The Pretty Reckless. They are fronted by Gossip Girl’s Taylor Momsen which at first would lead me to believe that they would be awful, but she put on a hell of a show and I was very surprised at how good of a front woman she was. The next day I saw her do an acoustic set at the Express Rocks Suite and her voice was pretty incredible. And lastly I figured I should mention the Crystal Castles set. I was told that we couldn’t photograph from the photo pit because a photographer sued Crystal Castles for breaking his camera once. I took this as a challenge and managed to used 15 years of mosh pit experience to push my way to the front. Right as I got there the girl from the band jumped into the crowd right next to me and I got some amazing shots without breaking my camera. The rest of the photographers were shooting from a hill with long telephoto lenses. I win.

Anyway, that is it for today. I hopefully will be able to get the crowd shots up tomorrow before I leave town for the madness that is the Gathering of the Juggalos.

Click here to see all my band photos from the 2011 Lollapalooza in Chicago, IL.

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