Well.. not rock exactly.. Naperville, the city I live in, is currently having it's yearly summer celebration which is known as Ribfest. They get a bunch of different vendors to come in and cook up a whole boat load of ribs and serve them up along with the usual insanely unhealthy carnival food.. elephant ears, curly fries, and I've now seen my first fried Milky Way bar. Well, I didn't actually see it, just saw the sign for it.. But they also have live music. We've had a whole range of groups over the years, with some real big (but not currently big) names. This year was kind of looking to be a dud, I didn't find anything to get excited about until I was informed that we'd have The Fixx playing. The truth is I didn't know many of their songs, but I had heard Red Skies and like it a great deal. And I think of them as a quintessential 80s group, and I'm a BIG 80s music fan. So after picking up some special earplugs that are supposed to still let you hear the full frequency range, just at much lower volume levels, I was off to hear some music and eat some barbecue. It was my first time shooting a live musical event, I was really excited. I was also chimping away like a madman.. I feel no shame about it, it was a totally new situation and I had no idea how my metering system would deal with it, I was constantly checking exposure. Besides The Fixx I also saw the Psychedelic Furs. I'd heard OF them, but didn't really know who they were. Yet it turns out I've heard their music, and have a certain fondness for at least one of their songs. In any case they made for some of my favorite pictures because they were on later and the sun had gone down by then, the stage lighting shows up stronger in the pictures and really shows in the smoke. Anyway, pictures follow. The first one is the singer from The Fixx, they were playing "Saved By Zero" and that appears to be a zero sign. I'd never seen it before, since I didn't really follow the group, but a lot of people in the audience knew it. I really haven't included any examples of this, but I was at a new level for hand holding stability. I kept dropping below the 1/focal length shutter speed rule of thumb, yet, well.. the shots weren't razor sharp, but they were usable. I have one that's 1/100th of a second taken at 200mm. It's pretty darned good. I've always been pretty good at hand holding, but tonight was a whole new experience. So I'm pretty darned pleased. I just have to decide if I want to head out again tomorrow to catch Heart. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
