the star-advertiser sent me to the sold-out bruno mars show at the blaisedell last week.  it was great seeing a local boy nominated for as many grammys as he is bringing it back home, and the behind the scenes scene was just crazy.  like, mayor carlisle, bruno, and his father chatting it up kind of crazy.  it was a pleasant change from the usual bar crawl.

if you know me at all, you know i am horribly out of touch with popular music, and wonderfully happy with avoiding most of the autotuned, over-marketed, under-talented crap that tops charts these days.  to be honest i hadn’t paid much attention to bruno’s music or his career, besides randomly hearing a song of his in the background somewhere.  but i do have to say that his live show blew me away, he has the presence and talent to rock an arena, and being a singer-songwriter-producer, he’s one of the few chart-topping artists who’s actually the real deal (a talented musician, not just a talented actor and glorified karaoke singer).  his father’s band, the love notes, were the opening act…and they absolutely killed it.

the show itself was crazy to shoot…i’m not used to shooting in such a huge space, and with the lack of photo pit (not such good planning on the part of the promoter, especially for a high-profile event this size), and the proliferation of “photographers” breaking rules (taking seats that weren’t theirs, blocking the audience, and shooting longer than the 3-song max) and causing problems with security that then impaired my ability to shoot the show, i only had two songs to get the images i needed in the can.  but, despite all the issues, the shoot worked itself out and i’m pretty happy with the results.  enjoy.

-a

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