John Mark McMillan : Des Moines

Over the past 2 years, through a lot of work shooting shows and a little bit of serendipity, I've become friends with John Mark McMillan and his band. They always put on a good show, I'm always encouraged, and I always try to bring my camera.

Tour de Compadres: John Mark McMillan

This tour was one of the best I've seen. There's still a solid bit of it left, so if you missed this first leg, check out the next leg. Midwestern cities coming up include Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. I photographed three of the bands on this leg of the tour. The first was John Mark McMillan and company.

Mostly I'm impressed that his suit is white and I don't know how he doesn't spill coffee all over it all the time. And from a photography perspective, it was insanely helpful for white balancing the lights. 

For this particular date, the venue had strict photography restrictions. Primarily this meant that I could only shoot from the far sides of the stage, but on the ground. Sort of next to where the photo pit would be. At first I wasn't stoked about this (I didn't have my 50mm lens, so I was shooting everything with a 35--not ideal for faraway shots), but I decided to take it as a challenge. How can I differentiate these shots? How can I make them interesting or exciting, when I'm taking them all essentially from the same two angles? I worked hard and challenged myself and I'm more than excited about the result. These don't look like my typical concert shots because they are indeed further away. But different isn't always bad, and in this case, I think the result was something pretty neat.