Last Thursday, I accompanied 9 kids from a literacy organization called 826chi http://www.826chi.org/ down to a world music concert in downtown Chicago. They were working on a week long photography project as a summer program. My job was to teach them concert photography.
So I arranged through Mike Orlove and Jill Hurwitz of the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events for the kids to get photo passes for a band from Niger called Etran Finatawa. They got on the train and met me at the venue, where they were all given passes and were told that they could shoot the whole show (last time that will ever happen to them!
Then I gave them a half hour talk about shooting a concert. It was very cool to watch them shooting the show, the dancers in the audience, and the venue itself. I heard that their pictures came out great!
I blasted out of there as soon as the show was over and headed out to the suburbs to photograph Mana, one of my favorite bands even though the entire show is in Spanish and I don’t understand a single word coming from the stage! They are a great four piece rock band, aided by a few backup musicians and for part of the show an eight piece string section. Nicer people are hard to find in this business.
All in all a great night!