I honestly think you’re playing too much into the victim mentality.

This is my advice:

What you described happens in just about every field and will continue to happen. I’ve experienced many similar things. When people said to me in a drunken rave one night, “Yeah man, just give me a call I’ll set you up with all the best contacts in that place / country.” Yet when I call them and leave a message they never call back etc. It happens and it’s almost to be expected.

You know what I did? I just went and did it anyway – in my own way. I went to those places and countries and I made my own luck. It worked out way better than I could have imagined because I found my own path.

The other thing is if your concert photographs are great you are eventually going to get the paid work. If your photos are not great yet, then you won’t get the paid work.

It means you have to keep working on your skills and craft until your work is really great. Unless you are exceptionally skilled, it’s going to take you way more than a year to be really great at anything in photography.

It took me many years of work and making many mistakes to get paid to do theatre and event photography.

Getting paid for concert photography is an incredibly small niche area of photography – and it seems almost every new photographer wants to do it.

Remember – no one out there in the photography world owes you anything.

Yes, people can choose to freely share their advice and experience – just like I am doing now.

Can’t you get your assistant to carry all that stuff? jk

I’d leave at least one of those lenses at home. Maybe leave behind the 200-500 and take a teleconverter for the 70-300.