2014-05-20: YG in Sacramento

Photo I took of YG during his 2014 "My Krazy Life" Tour at Ace of Spades in Sacramento. I posted this photo on Twitter, but wanted to give more of the story behind it because it ended up being the photo that iconized this pivotal moment in my creative journey. 

Back in May 2014, someone hit me up to see if I was interested in taking a gig they couldn't make, which was to accompany a different rapper to the YG show to more or less shoot press, bts, type pics for him to use for socials. I didn't fully understand the job, but I accepted without questioning. It was either unpaid or virtually unpaid, but YG's career had fully gained momentum by this point and was eclipsing into mainstream success, along with DJ Mustard who seemed to find a fast track to success the moment he stepped on the scene. It was something 20 year old Max was not gonna miss. 

YG was slated to perform two shows that day at the Ace of Spades: a matinee in the early afternoon and an evening performance around 6pm. By the time the rapper (Vell) and crew I was with had arrived, YG's first performance was about to begin. I was unsure of *how close* Vell and YG truly were, but walking directly onto YG's tour bus and meeting him was enough to answer whatever questions I had about that. He ended up being way nicer to me than I expected! As he  rifled through various bags and drawers, proclaiming things like, "Where's my fuckin belt?", he still maintained a warm and unfazed demeanor - which was super refreshing for me because if you couldn't already imagine, I was very out of place, and there was no hiding that. 

As I'm writing this I'm realizing there's many facets to this story that I'm unable to go into if I want any clear shot at getting to the point. Such as my experience hanging out during the day and attending a night club walkthrough with DJ Mustard and the squad that night. Maybe I'll tell more another time, but I'm going to cover what I can.

I had some sort of photo credentials, but definitely not exactly what I needed. So the first performance I shot entirely from the stage, and for the second performance I was able to shoot the first 3 songs from the pit and the rest from the stage, I believe. This photo is from one of those 3 songs. At the time this photo was taken, I had never used auto-focus before, only manual. Because I'm self taught, I followed the simple advice of the friend I bought the camera from and that was, "Don't shoot auto, teach yourself manual" -- and I took that more seriously than I should have! Luckily later this year I would begin shooting with auto-focus and having a much better experience with photography, but this photo was composed well enough and managed to make the cut! 

After I returned home, I posted this photo to my Tumblr captioned simply with the quote "Do yo dance YG do yo dance!" and the appropriate hashtags. Sure enough, about a week later, I see a few people tagging me in something on Instagram and lo and behold, YG had posted the photo to his Instagram, with the caption "Do yo dance YG! Do yo dance!" Obviously I wasn't tagged, but it still was incredible to me because how the fuck did he find it? The only thing I could imagine was someone from his label or team just searching Tumblr hashtags and came across it that way? Who knows. But, the fact that it had managed to be appreciated enough for someone to reach down into the depths of obscurity and pull MY photo all the way to the top to where it made it to YG's instagram feed (one he wasn't posting very regularly on) was a massive indicator for me to continue moving forward in the direction I had been fighting towards. It was monumental for me. And at the time I didn't really know that, it was just really fucking cool. But, in retrospect it is incredibly easy for me to see how absolutely essential appreciating these sort of moments and letting them hold significance was! Moments like that provided my sails with wind and vitalized me along my journey. That shit is so important.