Another Christmas Concert

The other night, Sheila and I attended a Christmas concert at Ellie's school and watched her perform at her first concert.  Last night, we headed out again for a Christmas concert at Lukey and Kenzie's school.  This time Lukey was performing. 

This school has a nice "performing arts" building albeit a bit small.  It is an exceptionally small school so perhaps this room is large enough for expected crowd size but it sure seemed quite small to me especially considering the size of the sound gear (big sound for big spaces). 

The first thing I noticed when we stepped into this building is all the Yamaha sound gear, a few pianos and nice lighting.  I found this to be quite impressive since I prefer Yamaha sound gear myself and the photographer in me is always happy to see good, effective and dramatic lighting!

On this night, we found out that Lukey was singing two or three songs.  Lukey, on more than one occasion, had told us that he has been playing piano at school so we definitely did not expect to see him play drums and sing.  Actually, he wasn't at a piano at all! 

So, on the first song of the night, I was sitting in the back on the left side of the room and shooting photos from there.  I chose this spot because it gave me the best view of the keyboards (which is where I expected Lukey to be situated for at least a song or two).  From my vantage point, the drummer on my end of the stage was completely hidden by a large Yamaha PA speaker from my angle.  I was more concerned with having a view of the keyboards since that is what Lukey told us he was playing so, with the info I had, I didn't mind the drummer being hidden from my view.  

Near the end of the first song, through my lens, I happened to catch a glimpse of the drummer's shirt slightly peaking out on one side of this big PA speaker...  it was plaid and I knew Lukey was one of the very few wearing a plaid shirt...  I immediately started wondering, "what the...  is that Lukey?"  

I moved to the center of the room as far as I could without blocking the view for others so I could see if I could see who was at the drum kit.  If it was indeed Lukey, I wanted to capture a photo or two of Lukey.  He was on drums for the first song!  Luckily, I managed to capture a photo or two of him at the drum kit. 

A couple of things to note here...  It was a relief to shoot photos in this lighting after the previous night at Ellie's concert in a neighboring school's cafegymatorium.  This was a much nicer venue.  My biggest complaint about this stage is that the keyboardist was completely in the dark the entire night.  I don't know why one of the lights wasn't pointed that way.  Another thing worth pointing out (and it is likely due to my age) is that this room is awfully small for live rock/pop music with a drum kit.  The drum kit sets the minimum volume for everything else and a drum kit is loud in this small room.  This really was a great place for shooting photos though.  I'll have to keep that in mind for future concerts at this school.