I’ve been editing this show listening to the wind and rain during hurricane Florence which seems appropriate in some way as this show, Jason Aldean High Noon Neon Tour with special guests Luke Combs and Lauren Alaina, had been rained out originally and re-scheduled. For the original date, when the show was cancelled due to thunderstorms in the area, we all were stuck for hours in the parking lot waiting for our turn to get out. As music photographers we are lucky to have access to the VIP parking lot but in a time like this you are the last to get out, so it took a couple of hours before we could budge. I don’t know what was happening in the other areas but in VIP folks were drunk and cranky with one guy yelling at, and the way his date was screaming and crying, perhaps beating his date. People swarmed around, beer in hand, trying to control the situation. You just know there are guns in the pick-ups and I was nervously waiting to hear a shot. The yelling, screaming  and crying were going on for a while, and fortunately I found a way into another row and put about fifty feet between me and the drama.
The show was re-scheduled, and this evening was a beautiful North Carolina night. Everything went well. We only got to shoot two songs for each band from the soundboard which means we were about 30 yards away. I brought my 400mm Canon 2.8, and a Canon 70-200 2.8, and attached a 1.4 teleconverter to that which transforms that lens to something like a F4 325mm lens. This all amounts to a lot of work and precarious juggling with ridiculous equipment for these images. But you know, all the drama to get these shots seems to make it worth it. I just hope that the woman in the parking lot from that first night is well and safe, and has moved on.