little miss swift

By strazz

October 12, 2008

Category: Daily work

6 Comments »

When I got the assignment to shoot the free Taylor Swift concert at the Chicago Country Festival, I knew that there would be some good photos to be made.

I also knew that even though those good photos would be found in the crowd, my newspaper would only be interested in running one photo of Taylor Swift singing.

I guess I could have just shoot what was expected and leave it at that but the day I do that will be the day that the paper is looking for something different.

Anyways, enough photo philosophy and back to the photo.

Shortly after arriving at tonight’s show, I stumbled across Brooke Kassal. It wasn’t hard to find Brooke. She was the 8-year-old wearing the blonde wig and holding a silver guitar. When I first saw this little Taylor Swift clone, she was standing near the backstage entrance being fawned over by two sisters. Brooke had just met her idol and she was chattering away about the encounter. 

I made a couple photos that I liked quite a bit then I bid Brooke adieu and headed to the front of the stage to shoot the real Taylor Swift.

After making my concert pix, I transmitted several back to the Trib and packed up to walk back to the Tower. A minute later, who did I see? Little Miss Kassal standing on a post watching the concert.

Now this was a photo opportunity. I crouched on the ground ten feet in front of the scene, framed the girl so that a distracting light was behind her head and started shooting.

It was quite bizarre to watch the people in the crowd’s reaction as they passed Kassal. They would either do a double take as they walked by or ask to have their picture taken with the girl or even weirder, they would get out a dollar bill and stuff it in the girl’s guitar.

Damn, I  love my job.

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