Country Harvest Music Show

As some of you may recall, I have been taking event photos for the town as part of the Canada 150 celebratory year. I think I am up to 18 events now, the latest being the Country Harvest Music Show with proceeds donated to the hospital building fund. I am pleased to do this as my little contribution to the community.

What I do, along with mostly one other photographer is go to an event, shoot photos, and then upload them to a dropbox where, as I understand, they are stored by the town in some sort of perpetuity for future citizens to look back upon.

This concert wasn't held in the townhall venue, which I am more familiar with, so I was being a little shy about approaching this event and being so bold as to play photographer in a strange place. I was going to leave this occasion up to to Bob, the other photographer, but he demurred with the flimsy excuse of celebrating his 45th anniversary. Seriously Bob, get yer priorities straight!

Bob is a very friendly, outgoing, knows and talks to everybody sort of bloke, and I'm not, so I was uncomfortable in this case. But I was able to relax a little as the evening wore on, particularly when a press photographer showed up for awhile and I could see him scurrying boldly hither thither and yon. He became a role model of sorts although I can't see that I could even approach his level of bold.

Anyway, I persisted and got some shots of all of the main performers and three out of four of the accompanying band. I came home and processed and cropped. Processing is important to try to fix the crazy light balance issues that come with night concert photography. And sight lines are such that very often cropping is necessary.

I narrowed about a hundred shots down to less than 20 and uploaded them to the town. As requested I tagged them for easy identification in the future. This is the backup band's fiddler.

I don't know why I haven't thought of it for another event, but in addition to submitting many individual photos, I decided to make a collage. I have made all sorts of collages in the past, but I just hadn't thought of it for these events. I did it poster size just in case.

From top left are the four performers in the order in which they appeared. The lady in red was the first, and I think she was the best. She had a very clear, powerful, deep alto voice and sang the older style of country. Since much of the audience was older, that was much appreciated.

You have noticed that I got the pretty young lady in the collage twice, but this is not totally because I was smitten by her looks. I needed something in the centre to balance the photo once I had all of the individual photos in place. I tried the fiddler's photo, but it just didn't work. I think this one does. However, I do think that she is so appealing (in a nice way) that I am contemplating doing another collage of just her. We shall see.

There will also be a Christmas Country Concert at the same venue early in December, and I think I will be more comfortable, knowing what to expect.

EDIT: Well I got up early enough this morning to throw that other collage together before posting this. It's a quick hack job, but it was something to have a bit of fun with. The plain background that comes out in different shades in different photos doesn't help the blending, but it doesn't really matter because it's just for fun. I don't know the young lady's name.

EDIT2: Just for comparison, here is my birthday collage of/for Danica. Where the backgrounds are busier, blending seems to be easier or at least work better — for the most part anyhow.