first day of work
I had no idea what I was doing, of course. I’ve never been a picture taker. Blessed/cursed with a photographic memory, I’ve never needed to be. But there I was, a hired photojournalist who didn’t know her F-stop from a hole in the ground. Figuring I’d better act the part, I trotted ahead to turn and snap a few shots of the singers as they headed for the stage.
I got a variety of reactions. Phillip Davis, the Big Name soloist, was so focused he didn’t notice me. He filled my frame with an intensity I knew his fans would love. Bill Williams and Quentin Kelly also looked very serious as they went to work. On Kelly, the concentration was Byronic; on Williams, just grumpy.
Arlynn La Pierre and her children Tiffany and Raleigh, a mid-level folk trio whose presence in the otherwise high-powered Caravan I didn’t quite understand, gave me camera-ready smiles as they passed. I dutifully recorded them. Night and Day — the odd-couple duet of Shyrene McGill and Sarah Jeffers — waved and blew kisses. That was my first inkling that I had a lot to learn about lighting: the hallway’s fluorescents glared off Sarah’s fair skin and hair but threw harsh shadows on Shy’s African-American complexion, and the glossy fabric of their dresses created odd sunspots in the captured images. Note to self: Master PhotoShop.
The remaining Kellys, Quill and Quin, clowned it up when they saw me, mugging and posing and throwing off sparks of energy. Sharply tailored like their elder brother but a lot less starchy, they galloped past in a photogenic blur.
Bringing up the rear were Wainwright and Jimmy ____, the tour’s silver-haired business manager and the bass voice of FourWord, Williams’s quartet. With a blue suit coat buttoned over his burghermeister’s belly, ____ supported the dragonfly next to him with one beefy arm.
“Get that thing out of my face,” she snapped, turning her head away from me. ____ scowled and steered her wide around me. He relinquished his hold when she stepped forward to take her fiancé’s hand. Quill Kelly beamed down at her from a full foot above.
As the last person passed, I turned to shoot over their backs into the stadium. I had arrived during the warm-up act, focused on finding Williams backstage, and hadn’t taken a good look around me. Now I got an eyeful through the lens of my Nikon. Tuning in, I got an earful as well.
Like most Praise Caravan concerts, this one was sold out. The stage huddled in the middle of the arena floor, the instrumental musicians already ranged around its edges. Row upon row of seats, first at ground level and then in the stadium tiers, rippled out from this center. The eager audience was on its feet, clapping and stamping and cheering, positively frenzied to get a look at their idols. The noise got even louder when Bill Williams emerged from the vomitorium, now all benevolent smiles.
How do you like your new office, Kielle? I asked myself. Um, it’s a little drafty, and the neighbors are noisy.
I trailed behind the posse and stayed with the group as Williams peeled off to bound up the few stairs to the stage. The stage manager guided the rest to a cluster of seats on a small riser to the north of the stage, where a large part of their evening would be spent looking attentive while their colleagues performed. There was one seat per singer, with a bottle of water beneath each, and no empty spot left over for me. Apparently I was meant to move about the floor like the video crew did.
The video crew are the unsung heroes of any PC concert. To the people in the nosebleed seats, a body on the stage looks like little more than a smudge on the floor. The videographers, however, film each performance from two or three angles and project the images on enormous screens hanging above the stage. Suddenly every seat in the house is a good one.
The camera crane dominated stage south. In addition to two handheld video cameras, there’s this larger one that dips and swoops above the stage, guided by a crew member with a bewildering array of joysticks. The video director, from a perch in the tech booth, coordinates the feeds from the three cameras to the overhead screens. I imagine it’s something like being the leader of a jazz combo — part rehearsed, part improv, but all intended to appear seamless to the audience.
I crept around the edge of the stage to get a frontal shot of Bill delivering his introductory remarks and had just gotten into position when he turned to address another section of the stadium. Damn! But of course he turned. This was theater in the round, where there was no “front.” He would be in near-constant motion so no one would have to stare at his back for too long. I would have to learn his rotation pattern, if he had one, so I’d know how to get in front of him. Meanwhile, I pretended I’d been angling for a profile shot all along.
I zoomed in on the instrumentalists as well. They, at least, stayed put. Mason Jeffers, Sarah’s husband, sat at the baby grand piano on the west side of the stage. When not tinkling out accompaniment, he served as Bill’s comic foil. In the few videos I’d seen, laconic Mace seemed a lot funnier than his boss, but the crowd appeared to disagree with me, howling at the stale (but clean!) one-liners Bill had been working for years.
Opposite the piano, stage east, sat the lead guitarist, the bassist and the drummer. I wondered why Bill bothered having a live band onstage, as electronic backup tracks nearly drowned them out, but again, he seemed to know his business. In all my reading of fan bulletin board discussions and concert recaps, I hadn’t seen anyone complain about excessive instrumentation. Well, I prefer a cappella music anyway, so maybe it was just me.
I framed numerous shots but clicked sparingly, wary of filling up my camera’s memory card too quickly. I had a spare card in my bag but no clear notion of how long it would take me to max them out. I had the laptop computer with me, too, so if necessary I supposed I could download photos during intermission. Nothing like on-the-job training.
FourWord led off the set. Phillip Davis, Jimmy ____ and Raleigh La Pierre joined Bill onstage to belt out a few old-time gospel favorites. The arrangements were solidly traditional, taking no advantage of the flourishes Davis could add to the high end. A standout soloist in his own right, Phillip deferred to Bill completely when they shared the stage. Raleigh looked like a bantam rooster among the more substantial men, choking a few notes off his range by stretching his neck to look taller. Fittingly, Jimmy, by far the heaviest man, served as both visual and auditory anchor of the group.
I got a variety of reactions. Phillip Davis, the Big Name soloist, was so focused he didn’t notice me. He filled my frame with an intensity I knew his fans would love. Bill Williams and Quentin Kelly also looked very serious as they went to work. On Kelly, the concentration was Byronic; on Williams, just grumpy.
Arlynn La Pierre and her children Tiffany and Raleigh, a mid-level folk trio whose presence in the otherwise high-powered Caravan I didn’t quite understand, gave me camera-ready smiles as they passed. I dutifully recorded them. Night and Day — the odd-couple duet of Shyrene McGill and Sarah Jeffers — waved and blew kisses. That was my first inkling that I had a lot to learn about lighting: the hallway’s fluorescents glared off Sarah’s fair skin and hair but threw harsh shadows on Shy’s African-American complexion, and the glossy fabric of their dresses created odd sunspots in the captured images. Note to self: Master PhotoShop.
The remaining Kellys, Quill and Quin, clowned it up when they saw me, mugging and posing and throwing off sparks of energy. Sharply tailored like their elder brother but a lot less starchy, they galloped past in a photogenic blur.
Bringing up the rear were Wainwright and Jimmy ____, the tour’s silver-haired business manager and the bass voice of FourWord, Williams’s quartet. With a blue suit coat buttoned over his burghermeister’s belly, ____ supported the dragonfly next to him with one beefy arm.
“Get that thing out of my face,” she snapped, turning her head away from me. ____ scowled and steered her wide around me. He relinquished his hold when she stepped forward to take her fiancé’s hand. Quill Kelly beamed down at her from a full foot above.
As the last person passed, I turned to shoot over their backs into the stadium. I had arrived during the warm-up act, focused on finding Williams backstage, and hadn’t taken a good look around me. Now I got an eyeful through the lens of my Nikon. Tuning in, I got an earful as well.
Like most Praise Caravan concerts, this one was sold out. The stage huddled in the middle of the arena floor, the instrumental musicians already ranged around its edges. Row upon row of seats, first at ground level and then in the stadium tiers, rippled out from this center. The eager audience was on its feet, clapping and stamping and cheering, positively frenzied to get a look at their idols. The noise got even louder when Bill Williams emerged from the vomitorium, now all benevolent smiles.
How do you like your new office, Kielle? I asked myself. Um, it’s a little drafty, and the neighbors are noisy.
I trailed behind the posse and stayed with the group as Williams peeled off to bound up the few stairs to the stage. The stage manager guided the rest to a cluster of seats on a small riser to the north of the stage, where a large part of their evening would be spent looking attentive while their colleagues performed. There was one seat per singer, with a bottle of water beneath each, and no empty spot left over for me. Apparently I was meant to move about the floor like the video crew did.
The video crew are the unsung heroes of any PC concert. To the people in the nosebleed seats, a body on the stage looks like little more than a smudge on the floor. The videographers, however, film each performance from two or three angles and project the images on enormous screens hanging above the stage. Suddenly every seat in the house is a good one.
The camera crane dominated stage south. In addition to two handheld video cameras, there’s this larger one that dips and swoops above the stage, guided by a crew member with a bewildering array of joysticks. The video director, from a perch in the tech booth, coordinates the feeds from the three cameras to the overhead screens. I imagine it’s something like being the leader of a jazz combo — part rehearsed, part improv, but all intended to appear seamless to the audience.
I crept around the edge of the stage to get a frontal shot of Bill delivering his introductory remarks and had just gotten into position when he turned to address another section of the stadium. Damn! But of course he turned. This was theater in the round, where there was no “front.” He would be in near-constant motion so no one would have to stare at his back for too long. I would have to learn his rotation pattern, if he had one, so I’d know how to get in front of him. Meanwhile, I pretended I’d been angling for a profile shot all along.
I zoomed in on the instrumentalists as well. They, at least, stayed put. Mason Jeffers, Sarah’s husband, sat at the baby grand piano on the west side of the stage. When not tinkling out accompaniment, he served as Bill’s comic foil. In the few videos I’d seen, laconic Mace seemed a lot funnier than his boss, but the crowd appeared to disagree with me, howling at the stale (but clean!) one-liners Bill had been working for years.
Opposite the piano, stage east, sat the lead guitarist, the bassist and the drummer. I wondered why Bill bothered having a live band onstage, as electronic backup tracks nearly drowned them out, but again, he seemed to know his business. In all my reading of fan bulletin board discussions and concert recaps, I hadn’t seen anyone complain about excessive instrumentation. Well, I prefer a cappella music anyway, so maybe it was just me.
I framed numerous shots but clicked sparingly, wary of filling up my camera’s memory card too quickly. I had a spare card in my bag but no clear notion of how long it would take me to max them out. I had the laptop computer with me, too, so if necessary I supposed I could download photos during intermission. Nothing like on-the-job training.
FourWord led off the set. Phillip Davis, Jimmy ____ and Raleigh La Pierre joined Bill onstage to belt out a few old-time gospel favorites. The arrangements were solidly traditional, taking no advantage of the flourishes Davis could add to the high end. A standout soloist in his own right, Phillip deferred to Bill completely when they shared the stage. Raleigh looked like a bantam rooster among the more substantial men, choking a few notes off his range by stretching his neck to look taller. Fittingly, Jimmy, by far the heaviest man, served as both visual and auditory anchor of the group.
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