Riot Fest, aka Chicago Concert Photographer Christmas

The pandemic was tough on a lot of serious fronts for many people. My fiancé and I were lucky that we were primarily worried about shortages of stuff in stores, whether our dog and cat would have separation anxiety when normal life returned, when live music was going to come back to Chicago, and whether or not our favorite venues across Chicagoland weathered the storm.¹ To say I paused when I picked up my press credentials and walked through the festival entrance last year, and said a big "thanks" to the universe is a true understatement.

Everyone has their happy place and live music in the city is ours.

The mighty photog Jake Barlow, found on a sweet holographic sticker.

Each of the trifecta of major festivals in Chicago (Lollapalooza, Pitchfork, and Riot) all have their own personalities and quirks. Riot in particular caters to the chiller crowd, folks that love a wide swath of rock, indie, and metal. That and All Rise’s Wonder Beer. It doesn’t try to be trendy or take itself too seriously. The phrase “Riot Fest sucks” is thrown around a lot, along with all the porta-potty jokes. The colorful devil head beams against the skyline, coupled with the ferris wheel that never seems to have all of it’s lights completely in operation.

Joey Belladonna and Scott Ian of Anthrax.

As a photographer covering the event, it’s an annual family reunion of sorts for the concert photogs of Chicago. It’s rare to have so many of us in the same pit. It’s the long weekend of the year where we’re exhausted from running from stage to stage but are nevertheless laughing along the way. No one seems to take themselves too seriously. It’s truly Christmas day for each of us.

Ice-T of Body Count.

The bands I covered last year included an eclectic, rockin’ bunch: Bayside, Best Coast, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Gwar, Night Moves, Rise Against, 3oh!3, Anthrax, Body Count, Devo, Facs, Health, K. Flay, Machine Gun Kelly, New Found Glory, Pet Symmetry, Simple Plan, and The Flaming Lips.

Tim McIllrath of Rise Against.

When I walked out of the last three-song set, I thought to myself, “the weekend went by too fast, let’s get to next year already”.

3OH!3.

Machine Gun Kelly.

Pierre Bouvier of Simple Plan.

¹ Of course this was after knowing vaccines were a thing and the fear of potential health issues subsided. That and that our jobs were as secure as they could be. Subscript to the subscript- get vaccinated if you haven't yet!
² Teenage me would have completely freaked out at the idea of New Found Glory and Simple Plan alone.

The "always carry a camera" rule

There’s something about having a moment captured within a frame. On a wall in your house. On your phone. In the acid-free pages of a physical album. Even the sprawl in iCloud of pictures of what you ate for lunch the other day or the seven hundred duplicate selfies of yourself with an outfit you were really proud of yourself for putting together.

I often get asked why I got into photography, and I’m always a little bit unsettled by the question. I think it’s because photography has just always been a natural part of my life and I can’t imagine it any other way. Each and every method sends the dopamine surging in my brain- regardless of whether it’s via phone, my Canon rig, or with a film camera of some sort. Anyone who knows me is well aware of my “always carry a camera” rule that I try to live by.

One of the earliest memories that I have of photographing things was on a trip to Florida with my Mom and Dad. I had one of those waterproof Kodak disposable cameras with 36 exposures of color film, and I was obsessed with capturing each and every moment of our trip. We headed back home to San Diego after the trip and I hounded my parents to drive me to Long’s Drug to pick up the epic bounty- the prized paper envelope of bright, arguably oversaturated prints in duplicate.

Me at Gatorland in Orlando.

In college, as most students experience, you find yourself wondering what the heck you’re going to do with your life. Cue Green Day’s “Good Riddance”, which will likely age me with some of you readers. If you asked me in 2008 what I wanted my life’s work to be, I would have likely mentioned something about working in a psych lab taking patient intakes. My day gig is working in technology… arguably similar to a psych ward at times, but I digress. I found myself needing an outlet. A refuge of sorts. In comes darkroom photography, front and center stage. I promptly signed up for a Darkroom Photography course with Professor Duncan McCosker. I didn’t realize how that three-credit experience would frame my adult life from then on.

“Family Dollar”, a 35mm black and white print made by me in the aforementioned class.

I graduated from that “university on the hill”, not to be confused with the “party school” or “that one school with the really smart computer science nerds”- and promptly was employed by said institution’s tech department. I made a real go of it in IT, after realizing that psychology research was not for me, coupled with the high cost-of-living residing in “America’s Finest City” and a chat with my trusted advisor, Duncan. He graciously handed me a key to the darkroom after one of our chats where I was particularly flustered about life, advising that I refill the stop bath when it ran low and visit it often. I don’t think I ever told him how much it meant to me that he trusted me to run the show there without supervision- that place was his pride and joy.

I didn’t get a chance to go there nearly enough, despite working on campus. I often worked overtime (read: 50 hours a week) and I wish I traded that little amount of extra cash for dedicated darkroom time. The last time I spoke with Duncan, I sensed something was off with him, but hindsight is often a cruel and cliché reminder of how fleeting life can be.

He never revealed that he was sick. Duncan sadly lost his battle to cancer in 2016. I had moved back to my hometown of Chicago that year. I remember getting the news on my phone, driving through rural Indiana on a two-lane highway on the way to an antique shop with my dad and being in shock.

His memory still very much lives on for me, often when the hum of a stage monitor challenges the limits of my earplugs that were hastily ordered via Amazon Prime after feeling the ringing in my ears after a My Bloody Valentine show at the Riv’ in Chicago. Sometimes I remember his advice when my shutter depresses just enough to allow for focus on a guitarist on stage and I commit to fully pressing down the shutter for a shot. Sometimes it’s when I’m editing frames late at night after a show and I remember his Photoshop advice. I wish he were still here, and I know he’d be proud.

At Duncan’s memorial exhibition, University of San Diego, 2017.

This hodgepodge of snippets of my memories is why I’m a photographer. It levels me and somewhere, somehow makes me feel accomplished- in preserving moments that matter to me. I’ll always have a camera with me.