Meet Sufjan

I am soooo excited tonight!  So excited that I'm blogging at 2am after being out in the blazing sun all day.  About a month ago I bought a zoom lens but I have not yet had the opportunity to put it to the test.  Until today that is!

As I mentioned the other day, we are in Austin for the Austin City Limits Music Festival. So of course I had lots of opportunities to take pictures at the fest... see

The Stars

Gnarls Barkley

Cat Power

and while I love some of these shots I got at ACL, they are not what I'm excited about.  After the fest tonight, we got tickets to see Sufjan Stevens at the Paramount Theatre.  I bet you don't know Sufjan (but if you do, you must totally rock).  He's one of the most amazing artists around right now, in fact, his last album topped every single decent music critic's Best of 2005 lists.  His sound is so unique and wonderful, you can't help but love him (plus he's absolutely adorable).  Seriously, go check him out. I recommend starting with Illinois.  You can come back and thank me later. Ok, now we are finally to the point when I tell you why I'm so excited!!!!  I snapped over 100 pics of Sufjan in the theater, and do you know why this is cool?  Because I had to switch my camera out of manual mode and take pictures in low light without a flash with an f/4 lens which I'd heard would just not work.  But guess what? It did!!! I figured out how to set it!  And these pictures kill me, 122 amazing pictures!!!!  Wanna know what my settings were?  I set my ISO to 800 (so I would have a lot of worker bees), I put the camera in shutter priority mode, and set the shutter speed to 1/60 s.  The results, PERFECTION!  (As far as I'm concerned at least).  Here's some proof!

Wow, do I rock or what? LOL.  These 3 photos of Sufjan have not been cropped or retouched or anything.  I resized for web and that was it!  Oh, you are probably wondering about the wings.  Fact is, Sufjan puts on one of the most incredible live shows you will ever witness.  When he tours with a band, he likes to dress them up. Last tour they were all cheerleaders, this tour they are butterflies.  He has almost an entire orchestra with him right now.  Best show I've ever seen.  And I've seen a lot.

Ok, well, i better get to bed, we have a long day in the hot Austin sun tomorrow.  I've gotten a few emails that I need to respond to but I'm still "on vacation", I just had to post these pics cause they make me sooo happy!!!!

Comments

[Paige]

Sounds like your having a blast!!! I don't know why I've never been to the festival before when I'm only a few hours away!! Enjoy and I can't wait to see some more of your pics!!!

[Ashley]

so cool!!! glad you're having fun :)

[Mary E]

OMG I agree, perfection...I love it when you go with your gut, despite what is or is not suppose to work. and it works, huh! Just goes to show you an artist must always great despite the conditions!!! Keep having a great time!!!

[Tania]

Those photos WOW!! Great work!

[Jennifer]

AWESOME photos! And now I'm off to check this guy out on iTunes...thanks for the tip!

[Robyn]

Great job with the photos!! You didn't need those classes afterall! ;)

Did you ever come down for your refund? I went for mine about noon on the first day of the close-out and had to beg my way in to avoid the 2 hour wait to shop the store.

[Tara Page]

Awww man, how fun!!! I love gnarls barkley...sounds like you had a blast. :)

[Michele]

Man am I green with envy! Is he the one that wanted to do albumns with all state names? If so I have heard a bit of his music from my son's ipod. He will find things and then get me hooked but not tell me names! Will check in with him later to see if this is him. Want to hear more! Hope you for to see Iron & Wine and the flaming lips!

[Michele]

Update to previous post - I went thru my cd's in my car - and yep I have Illinios! So I listed to it on the way to work.

[Donna Mook]

Hey Jen - You've been tagged! Get the info here:

http://dmook.blogspot.com/

Hugs,
Donna

[slkone]

Hey, it's a shame I didn't read up on your blog a little earlier. I live in Austin and we coulda had a beer together! ;) Glad you had a good time - you got some awesome pics!

[Shannon B. (aka dancingirisheyes)]

Wow Jenn! These are AMAZING! I just got back from the concert. It was definitely one of the top 5 concerts of all time for me! The guy is a brilliant songwriter! And flying supermans.....LOL! Man, you will never see that again in your life. Ha ha!