View allAll Photos Tagged JesusFreak!!!
Image 100% SOOC. No edits/crop.
Does it make me an official loser/dork to admit that I was completely laying down in the front row to get this shot? The stage was only about a foot and a half high...so...you do what you have to do. I got a lot of weird looks, maybe even a few snarls...but I figure, if you stand 2ft away from the stage, you apparently don't mind the possibility of someone coming and laying down in front of you! :-p
*sighs*
My last update was somewhat...prophetic. Not prophetic, but...it's as though I asked for something to "test" my happiness. And so it came. And my stress level went through the roof...but thus far happiness has remained.
Regardless of how or why it happened, probably 30 minutes after I typed up that update Friday night, my macbook died. kaboom- completely gone.
Monday I took it to the Apple store and was able to get a free repair out of it, despite my macbook being out of warranty...NVIDIA is the devil. You should look it up if you have a macbook. It's pretty evil.
The man said 5-7 days. And so I wait.
and wait.
and twiddle my thumbs.
Moving on.
A few months ago I had heard that Remedy Drive was coming to town. Then a bit later, I heard that Abandon was opening up for them. I had the incredible pleasure of seeing both bands perform at the JesusFreak Hideout showcase in Nashville back during GMA week...to say that it was an epic experience would be putting it lightly.
To say that they brought that same epicness basically to my doorstep, here in Indianapolis would, again, be putting it lightly.
I kept meaning to buy tickets, but as we all know...I'm not the most deliberate person in the world. I literally put it off for weeks. So when I looked down at the car clock on my way home from the store tonight, and saw that it was October the 8th,-5:57pm, I basically waved goodbye to seeing Remedy Drive. I felt silly. I was irritated that I fell victim to the "oh...I meant to go to that" curse again.
And so, when I got home I checked what time the show was scheduled to start. Doors open at 6:30. Nifty. I grabbed my camera, erased the photos on my memory card, grabbed a second lens, and was on my way.
I made it in time, ended up not having to pay, and to my surprise, there were only about 25 people in the room. By the end of the night, numbers grew a bit closer to 50...still, a small concert by anyones standards!
I really cannot put in to words how amazing Abandon & Remedy Drive are. I haven't been able to get into Remedy Drive's album, but live...they're in a league of their own. Abandon...it's pretty difficult to believe they're still relatively "new" to the national scene.
...oh, and did I mention that the HOPE Tour has a killer lighting system?!?! (okay, killer might be an overstatement, but considering the venue they played in, I was impressed with the quality system) Yea...you know you're a total dork when you start noticing stuff like that. It was so nice to not have to worry about bringing up my ISO to a high (but reasonable, on any other camera) number and risk the noise, or killing the shutter speed to bring in the extra light, but have total sh*t photos due to movement. I still had my ISO knocked up pretty high for most of it, but...I can handle the results. They're not brilliant, but they're not the crap I've been getting from other shows.
And hey- if nothing else, this crap ISO performance is forcing me to learn how to focus my 50 (re f1.8. Due to my d80's increasingly horrific low-light performance f2.8 is simply not an option, and God forbid the dreaded f4 when my 28-70mm is zoomed all the way!) manually in ever-changing settings! Auto-focus was clearly NOT meant for bands like Remedy Drive- it kept getting too confused by the constant movement, so yea...I had to step out of my comfort zone and focus manually on my 50 for a show.
Keep in mind, the last time I focused manually on that lens (during a concert, that is- I ALWAYS use manual focus aside from shows- and even then, it' normally manual on my other lenses) was Phil's Lafayette, IN coffeeshop show (may 2008)...and they turned out horrible! So yes...I had that terrible experience floating around in my head.
But yea. I'm hoping to get my macbook back soon. I'm not sure when the rest of the photos will be uploaded, because I've got a list of a million things to do, and these photos just fell to last place...so who knows.
On a side note, it was kind of cool to realize that I can still take a photo and just upload it, not relying on Photoshop to fix all of my mistakes and whatnot. I've gotten so incredibly spoiled to the magical quick-fixes of Photoshop that it's easy to forget that 99% of your work should be done in-camera. Maybe I need to deprive myself of Photoshop a bit more often...maybe that would give me the confidence I desperately need in photography?
I believe this was just before Hurricane Felix hit Va. Beach in August 1995. Va. Beach, home to CBN, has a lot of Jesus Freaks and this guy was one of them. He was gone as soon as I took the camera from my eye. Zoom in on this to read the guy's visor and his sign. FP4 film. 80-200mm zoom. Canon A2.
The soul savers were out on South Beach again for the Hip-Hop weekend extravaganza. Everything was going along pretty much the same as it always has till this Christian soldier began belting out the word of the Lord. I am certainly no fan of the way these folks believe and preach the word of the Bible but I really like this guy. He is very animated and theatrical in a way the others are not. Shortly after I photographed this exorcism of Satan from the souls of the black youth, he came up to me and asked if I could remove the red from his eyes. One of the things I love about all of them is that they seem to really love being photographed. They have seen my work, read my words and still like me photographing them.
Who: Street Preachers
What: Hip-Hop Weekend
Where: South Beach, Miami Beach, Florida USA
When: May 27th 2006