Sometimes a venue can take your breath away. Red Rocks is certainly one of those places. My first evening at Red Rocks was spent sizing up the venue while it was empty. With so many shooting angles I plotted my territory precisely so I could quickly move from point to point come show time. The tunnel that runs from front of house to backstage made navigating the crowd easy, I could run up top and within a few minutes be back in my dead center shooting position in front of the light board. By showtime on Friday I felt prepared, if not ready. When the doors opened the crowd came flooding in too circus music being played by the sound engineer. A furious dash for the best seats, tarps being flung through the air, hysterical laughter, it did feel like a circus. Once the fans were ready, so was the band, entering Red Rocks with an hour of sun left. The first night of music set the tone for the weekend, lots of energy with melodic interplay and plenty of crowd favorites. The last song, Ain’t Life Grand, really summed it up for me.
The second day started a little on the soggy side. The rain storm postponed the show slightly, but provided some rainbows over the skyline as the band took the stage. The cloud coverage, rainbows, and sun peaking through made for some spectacular shots of the entire venue and valley behind it. As the night progressed I felt I was getting some of my best work in, the lights were terrific, and the glow of the city with cloudy backdrop provided some dramatic natural ambiance. During the setbreak I decided to turn my camera to the crowd and capture the rocks and crowd using a wide angle lens. After my first shot I thought I saw something odd on the screen preview, after a closer look, it appeared to be the moon, but in the wrong spot. I took a number of shots at different exposures, and what appeared in the shots was not visible to the naked eye. After a little research I found out this was a reflection of the partial lunar eclipse I had caught.
The third day was an afternoon show, no night shooting, making the pace much less rapid fire. I spent some time during the first set shooting from a single centered position, attempting both panoramics and 360 degree quicktime files of the venue. It looked like the rain was going to return, but it never materialized. The second set had a number of special guests, DJ Logic and Eric McFadden. Eric and Jimmy trading guitar solos provided some terrific interaction and a few of my favorite shots of the weekend. The 3 days at Red Rocks provided a tremendous amount of material, one of my favorite shooting experiences to date.
