evening update...

Tri mama writes

We love our D70, but tridaddy Brian keeps looking at Nikor lenses. We use a 28X300 tamron from our film SLR and it works great-but Nikor's open another world. The only down side to the D70 is that you can't be inconspicuous taking shots-so by no means ditch the point and shoot. Have a great time at Cornerstone. Did you ever go to Sonshine?

Yeah, I've got a 28-80 and a 70-300 and while I REALLY love the 300, I think I'd find something a little wider than 28 more useful. I played around with the Nikor Fisheye this afternoon at a camera store and fell in love, but it's going to be a few months of saving before that joins the collection.

As to conspicuousness, yeah, I'm keeping the Olympus around, but being a staff photographer at the festival, I'm a little less concerned about conspicuousness. Everyone signs a photowaiver at the gate as part of their entrance so I'm in the clear to take shots of just about whatever I want. Starting Wednesday I'll be shooting and photo-editing over at the live coverage portion of the Cornerstone Website so make sure to stop by there (as well as here) to see what I'm up to.

As to Sonshine, yes, I've been there many times. Working with Pegtop, I spent more than a couple of years shilling merch behind their booth or helping my friend Terry with the impromptu stage he used to be in charge of. There was a time that I REALLY hated Sonshine... after going my first year and then heading to Cornerstone the next year, I couldn't see any comparison between the two. Cornerstone, in my eyes, was like the Coolest thing in the world and Sonshine, with it's smaller stages and copious amount of youth groups and youth group bands was really lame. I felt that way for quite a few years, but ventured back after awhile because A) I was working and B) It was free.

Sonshine is great for what it is... a regional festival. Though from what I've heard it's become an entirely different beast since Clearchannel has taken over booking duties.

I think my main beef with Sonshine, when I had a beef with Sonshine was this... at Sonshine, it wasn't unusual to see giant booths shilling obnoxious Christian t-shirts. Stuff like "Lords Gym" and "This Blood's For You!". I always thought Cornerstone was the antithesis of that. For example, one year I bought a t-shirt at the fest that said "Lord Jesus, Your sheep have sharp teeth."

A few years later, I can see that while the haphazard slapped togetherness of Cornerstone is something I still love... I can appreciate that Sonshine is centralized, it doesn't take a mile of walking to go from stage to stage, and if I want to go to town, it's only five minutes away. It's a handy festival. Handy to have outside the Twin Cities, handy to camp out at, and handy to experience. Cornerstone makes you work for your festival a little more. The mainstage is a mile walk from everything else (though sometimes I think that's to segregate the youth group factor that spends most of their evenings there), the coolest concerts don't even START until Midnight, thus ensuring that you're going to be up extremely late every night, the weather can be miserably hot in the Illinois corn fields or it can be miserably cold and rainy. It's a festival of extremes.

Would I go to Sonshine again? If I lived in the upper midwest I probably would. But Cornerstone will probably be the festival that continues to most feel like home.

I have to go help Ang clean the apartment. We're trying to get everything spic and span before we take off for a week. I might be back for some more poetic waxing a little later though.