Web 2.0 Expo Crowd Participation

Sometimes the fun of a shoot only reveals itself while reviewing the photographs after the fact. Today at Web 2.0 Expo, I took a group of shots looking down the escalators at the crowd of folks waiting for the keynotes. Now, when you’re shooting a group of people like this, there’s a whole list of reasons why an image won’t be what you want. People picking noses and the like come to mind. Well, today, there game changed a bit and the crowd participated a bit more than usual.

First, here’s a guy that decided he wanted to stick out a bit in the shot. Here are tight crops of four consecutive shots taken as I went up the escalators:

These are rough and unprocessed. As well, I didn’t have the best exposure settings for being on a moving platform. But, it’s clear that this guy was evidently having a fun time. I didn’t actually see him making the faces as I went up. But I did see his next move. He decided to wave for the camera. Seeing that, and in a move reminiscent of shooting at WWDC, I followed along and encouraged the crowd to follow suite and wave as a group. A few people played along, but most didn’t. One guy, however, didn’t like this at all:

He’s up and to the right of the sign. Yozwa. Tough crowd. I think that might be the first time I’ve been flipped off by a conference attendee. I don’t think I’ll be encouraging any more crowd participation at this event. In any case, the end result is that whether due to camera shake or audience “participation”, I had to toss most of the shots of this crowd of people. Only this one was usable in the end.