btw there is a picture that has been floating around the web for a few years now, of Sasha lighting a cigarette for someone in the crowd. Have you seen it? It kind of has a cult status and is used in mockery at various sites. There are also other far less than flattering pics of Sasha floating around. I feel like these might be other reasons they are very careful about photos.
Mostly brought up a lot since it's from ages past when DJs played smaller clubs and the booths had no expensive equipment like laptops or extra gear that could be unplugged, so someone could be right next to the DJ. So more of a good pic for older clubgoers to reminisce about the old days.
It still happens a lot though, at Cologne in Germany, it's a very similar setup with a DJ booth in the corner and people are right up to the DJ, so people were lighting Deadmau5's cigarettes regularly from over the booth.
So tonight we were supposed to shoot Sasha at our home base of Spybar, and I must say I have never been more disappointed with a DJ in my entire nightlife career. With the top 4 or 5 night life photographers in Chicago in attendance the only photographer allowed to take any pictures of Sasha was srika (totally understandable Ruben is incredible), even the house photographer was denied access. I tried taking a crowd shot from about 40 feet away from the DJ booth, when his manager shined a laser pointer in my eye to get me to stop. I feel that if your going to pay a DJ 5 figures to play a venue, he should at least give a brief period to snag some photos. As far as being super anal about photos Sasha puts deadmau5 to shame.
The issue is split between Sasha's new rig as well as POSSIBLY his new tour manager (assuming it's the same one when he was at Avalon back in March).
His rig has that low video screen behind him, so its tough to get a pic behind him without blocking it. When he was at Avalon, the new tour manager guy was not allowing anyone in there for a second. Luckally the guy who helped make the MAVEN was there, so both him and Sasha had a few words with him to let me go in there to at least get a good fisheye shot with the maven.
The tour manager doesn't understand how photography works, one of the very few tour managers I have met that is clueless about photography. He's one of the guys that assumes that no matter what the camera is, you can press a button and the picture magically comes out perfectly every time. So when I was going for that shot, the first batch of strobes I didn't get a good enough picture so I got the usual comment "Hey, don't you think you have enough pictures?" to which I replied "I don't have any good ones, so i'm not leaving until I get a good one".
Also, the major part is the new video rig. Of course everyone wants focus on the rig with the DJ, rather than just the DJ, so most management would rather have pics of the big video pizzaz with the DJ in the middle, rather than a more intimate shot, so I'm guessing a DJ gig without that rig will be back to "normal" photography. Which is why for the Deadmau5 dates with the cube, even i'm not allowed to take pics on most of the stages 
Sasha himself isn't anal about photos too much anymore. He was back in 2005-era when I started shooting because anytime even a flash went off, he would go in a rage. Thats what forced me to get a 50 f/1.4 and call it my "Sasha Lens" so I wouldn't make him mad, but shortly after that he wasn't a crazy partier anymore and got married, so he calmed down immensely.
What did Deadmau5 do that was anal about photos BTW? I can probably explain the reasoning.
