www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22113326 It's not mentioned in this article specifically but my personal bugbear about mobiles is the little pools of light that flicker on and off in one's peripheral vision whilst watching a play, most often ruining the mood and effect. Texting and browsing whilst in a theatre, during the play, should be a chucking-out offence IMHO. At music gigs it depends on the style music, I guess.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22113326 It's not mentioned in this article specifically but my personal bugbear about mobiles is the little pools of light that flicker on and off in one's peripheral vision whilst watching a play, most often ruining the mood and effect. Texting and browsing whilst in a theatre, during the play, should be a chucking-out offence IMHO. At music gigs it depends on the style music, I guess.

I'd agree, recently at the cinema a fellow came in late, sat a seat away from me and proceeded to check his emails and text people for the next ten minutes right in my peripheral vision.

I politely asked him to desist, and to be fair, he did move without complaint.

I read an article recently where it stated that some New York theatres have started to have "cell phone zones" usually in the wings where people can tweet and blog to their hearts content.

Can't really see the point in attending a live event and then fannying around with an electronic device, but, each to their own.

Makes me think of an article I was reading the other day by someone who had penned guidelines for US visitors to Europe on photography in churches (yes, really). And it was, in essence, saying switch off everything that pings or flickers.

Completely agree on theatre – and I think you're right on music too.

Once upon a time I loved going to gigs, but the mobile phone has single handily made it nigh on impossible for me to enjoy them any more.

I could cope with faux fans, but to try and watch a live act through a sea of handsets is tantamount to heresy.

I don’t buy the theory that it’s like a memory of the occasion, the live performance cannot be replicated.

The general issue is that the cellphone has become an appendage of the body of millions of young people and they can't even imagine life without it switched on. The exponential growth of apps only feeds the addiction (and it is addiction pure and simple, of a similar kind to video gaming).

Many years back I posted some comments about holidaymakers with camcorders which where the then latest thing. Many folk could be seen walking around with (usually the father) permanently filming every banal moment.

Now I love my photography, but learned that to have a holiday, you need to be in the holiday. And if you spend it with camera in hand, you're not having teh holiday, you're an unpaid recorder of the holiday. You're not doing things in teh holiday; you're filming other people doing things that you should be enjoying yourself, and for little point, since the last thing anyone ever wants to do is actually [iwatch[/i someone else's holiday video. Photos, in modest quantity, are not too bad a chore though invariably as crap as the video.

Now that every phone is a video recorder, the current young generation have the same obsession. But you certainly can't get into and can't fully enjoy a gig when all the time you're stood there like a prat with phone aloft, like half the other people in the room. And of course for the few who are NOT recording it, the sea of raised phones and shining screens is a huge distraction and annoyance.

Recording, and any recording equipment is still formally prohibited in most venues, but the prohibition has been overtaken by technology and weight of numbers ignoring it, and so most venues just let them get on with it. That's a shame, but practically, I don't know that they could do anything to enforce a ban given every single person has a cellphone, and you can't either ban them from venues no take them off 5000 people.

There must, by definition, be many people on here who have video'd gigs on their phones. I wonder what percentage of these videos are ever watched, and by whom. If you do watch it, don't you wish you'd left your phone in your pocket and actually watched and enjoyed the gig fully live, like what you paid for, instead?

That goes for the cinema too. If a person cannot go 2 hours without looking at their phone then they really have a serious problem. Anyone seen with it on should have it taken away from them and smashed.

My only problem is the utter pointlessness of it, the images you get are uniformly terrible and you struggle to make anything at all out and the audio quality is equally rubbish.

If you were getting a snippet of the event I could kind of understand it. But you don’t, you get a mess of an image with terrible audio.

You say this, but you could say exactly the same about the awful holiday photos that the vast majority of people take. The fact is, they actually honestly don't know they are producing utter crap.

Holiday photo standard id accept, at least you can generally make out what you are looking at even if its not particularly interesting.

When people show me photos or videos of gigs I usually have to ask what it is im looking at

Fool! Surely, that will only encourage them to start rabbiting on about it thinking you're actually interested! i recommend giving it a minute or maybe two, and then develop a need for the toilet.

Nothing annoys me more than searching Youtube for, say, a Bruce Springsteen live recording to find that its been taken from row ZZ on a mobile phone, not only is the sound just a mess of sound, the picture just a haze of random pixels usually of the back of someones head, but you also get the video-ee talking to their mate over-riding what little of the music you could hear, and it doesn't help that they are also ALWAYS stood next to the same woman who insists on whooping every 30 seconds.

Having said that, and having mentioned Mr Springsteen, who must be the most video'd performer on Youtube, given that he hasn't stopped touring since about 1996, the best example of "amateur film from the crowd" is of him performing in Minnesota (search Bruce Springsteen "Thunder Road" St.Paul,Mn. 11/2/07) but then again, it is filmed on a handheld video camera and not a phone.

We had stacks and stacks of old photos and holiday snaps and have now embarked on a ruthless crap-reduction exercise, sifting through pack-by-pack and chucking anything that's not evocative.
We are currently about 10% of the way through and I'd estimate that we are averaging about 3 photos per pack of holiday photos that are anything like worth keeping, the rest are just dross.

When you pick up a picture of a sporting event (e.g. athletics) and you can't tell which venue it is, never mind who the competitors are, well ...

I am reminded of a photo my Mother once showed me.
To me, it was a picture of a car park with a skip in the corner.
To her it was a picture of the Scottish highlands, just vaguely visible as a grey smudge in the distance.

Christ this thread is like doing voluntary work at an old people's home.

I think photography skills have got worse over the decades - I have two very large boxes (the very big filing boxes) full of family photos from the 1920s onwards, I seem to have nominated myself as the family depository for old cr@p.

The ones of my grandparents from the 1920s/1930s are few but are wonderful old photos of the whole family sitting on beaches in random resorts and there's always an old bloke in full three piece suit and (I kid you not) a bowler hat, with his shoes off and trousers rolled up, pipe in mouth looking for all the world like Jimmy Edwards, apparently he was an aging uncle of my grandparents who they dragged around everywhere with them.

I cherish those old photos (even though they are currently in the garage) but I also think there was more of a "special occasion" to them and the people who took them, for starters it was always just one of the fathers who could "use" the camera (and never a woman) and the film was probably so expensive to buy and then process that they made sure it was going to be a good photo before they took it.

Skip forward 50 years to my mother's efforts with her Instamatic camera and there's a dramatic fall in quality and subject but she was usually quite happy to take a photograph of her feet or the sky rather than what was supposed to be the subject.

Im going when he opens the Leeds arena. I hope that it will be better than any of mobile phone recordings.

Boy, has he p1ssed off Elton John



Poor old Elton was booked to do the opening gig, promoted as such, ego stroked as a VIP, then Springsteen - according to the venue manager - actually rang up and asked if they could fit him in before Eltons gig, which fortunately they could as its ready a little before schedule.

I'm very jealous, hope its a good night.

Of course, and it's because the whole history of the technology of photography has been the history of the reduction of the costs involved in taking a photograph. Large format -> medium format -> 35mm -> instant polaroids -> disposable cameras -> digital with reduced if any processing costs -> multi function phones with increasingly better cameras.

Once upon a time people paid for wedding photographers. All the weddings I've been to in the last five maybe ten years or so have included a request to bring some kind of camera with the invite and the couple will select the best from those submitted. And they want them all, thank you very much. Most of what they end up with is people taking pictures of people taking pictures. It's a faithful rendition of the experience.

They (or Malcolm Gladwell) say you need 10,000 hours of practise to achieve expertise in a chosen field. It doesn't follow that 10,000 people can produce a substitute for expertise within an hour, but for the majority of people it will be good enough.

Aye, and on an associated point, back in the day the snotty teenager's dream was to have a proper decent hi fi sound setup that could demolish buildings and faithfully reproduce the footsteps of a moth. However nowadays sound quality seems to have died a death, tinny mp3 sound via a tinny mono speaker or £1 headphones seem fine. A recording of a concert on a mobile phone seems fine to them*. I reckon many folk wouldn't even recognise their chosen music if they heard it on a proper setup!

Each of course to his own, but they don't know what they're missing and probably never will.

* (But there is an internet service which will match the proper recording of your gig to your tinny recording so you can end up with your video and a "proper" soundtrack. I forget what it's called but vbfg will deffo know)

I don't think it's as big an issue at gigs as is made out. I saw the Foals (who are dead popular with the young uns) at a sellout at Rock City last month and there weren't many kids filming it on their phones. Mind you it was a heck of a crush.

There was one lass who tried to film the whole thing on her phone but it must have been pants since she kept getting jostled in the crowd. She was daft enough to keep giving the evil eye to people for unavoidably barging into her though.

Let's face it, if you hold your arm in the air for a long period it gets uncomfortable after a bit.

Show a bit o' respect, you young whelp.
In my day we respected our elders ... etc etc

Am I getting any visitors?

Maybe we are related.

It's ten past four, Mr. Beard.

Thank you, two sugars and a spot o' milk please.
He's a nice young man, I like him.

Oh I'm definitely with you on that one, the actual sound experience of listening to music just doesn't seem to be very important at all now and the few remaining national high street electrical retailers just don't seem interested in the subject any longer.

I'd video it for you but not sure my phone would last 4 hours



I've videoed him once, last year at Etihad. Waitin' on a Sunny Day is our wedding song so its special to us.