poi dog pondering

Lawrence has always been a great town for live music - but live outdoor concerts downtown are a relatively new thing. My friends over at Lawrence CVB were one of the main sponsors of Lawrence Live – a free downtown concert this evening. I grabbed the cameras, had some dinner with the family, and headed over to the concert. Poi Dog Pondering - was the feature band. Wow, what a great sound.

Their website describes them as – "The little big band with the strong back and supple / stubborn heart, has been following it's intuition for 20 years now. From bohemian street buskers to impossible to market major label sacrificial lambs... Poi Dog Pondering have ripened into staunchly independent musical voyagers."

I got a Nikon D300 recently - so this was a perfect opportunity to test out shooting wide-open at ISO 1600. Sure, the photos had some noise - but a lot less than my noisy D200. The band has a woman fiddle player - and for whatever reason I can't resist that. I probably shot 200 shots of her. The stage lights were mostly red/purple - so I chose to tone the images with a toned, retro-grain look. I'm certainly no great concert photographer, but I'm really happy with what I got. And check out Poi Dog Pondering's website for some good tunes.