Catchupalooza

01 August 2008: Lolla

It has been way too busy this summer but I see a light. I have been trying to get this blog fired back up but if it is not one thing it is another.

USTA nationals...Done. Olympics...Done. Cubs & Sox...Done. Bears...not done yet. Trib redesign...Done. Summer...Done. Bears & Blackhawks...not done. Bulls...getting started. Basement...working on it. Adoption...still waiting.

I have caught up on everything that happened over the summer so here goes.

Lollapalooza was in town at the beginning of August and I always wanted to get out there and see what that was all about. So before my editing shift I bounce out to Grant Park to help Red Eye editor Chase Daniels cover a stage and look for a few features. We also had a request in to shoot people wearing fedora hats for the At-Play section so I was looking for that in the mix.

It was smoking hot out there so I brought a change of clothes to work in since I knew I would be drenched by the time I was finished. My personal goal was to find a couple nice features but it was early and the crowds were still pretty sparse.

I shot the band Yeasayers from New Jersey on the AT&T stage. The music was fun but they were pretty typical concert photos, nothing to blog home about. Most of the crowd were there waiting to see Radiohead play one of the headline shows at night.

I ran my ass off for about 3 hours before I had to cut bait and walk back to the office and jump on the sports picture desk.

I was just starting to get warmed up but here are three okay features, no real moments but just trying to make something out of nothing. My card with hot weather features that I downloaded to a laptop at the event is still out there. I waited so long even the edits are no longer in our archive because we did not run one in the paper. If I get the images I will do a hot weather tryptich later.

After wandering though the crowds looking for some fan photos I came across a guy who lives near Grant Park and had been to every Lollapalooza framing up a show in his camera. I used a 300 and stopped down to f14 to get maximum depth of field to just make out the Lollapalooza banner on the stage behind him.

My second of this day was a fedora shot of a guy from NY another photo that I used a stage banner as my background.

Finally a shot of Yeasayer on stage. Usually you get to shoot the first two or three songs at concerts before getting the boot so you have to figure out what you want to shoot and git er done. I usually like to back off and shoot bands with longer lenses and I shot both here but this wide worked out.

A few photos were used in our web gallery and I could have stayed and shot all night, but the desk called.

Rock on!

john