Conner Smith At Théâtre Beanfield

The old running joke was that Country music was pretty much music based on lost.  I lost my job, I lost my car, I lost my home, I lost my girl, I even lost my dog.  Sounds like a Country song.  I have my own personal Country loss experience to add to the list, I lost my lens.  My lens and I were last seen together at the Théâtre Beanfield this past Saturday night where an evening of Country Music was on the menu.  Conner Smith was in town for the final show of his ‘The Storyteller’ tour.  At only 24, he had a heck of a good year.  A new album, ‘Smokey Mountains’ was released in January, and finished up the year with a new EP, ‘The Storyteller’ and a headlining tour to go along with the release.  The final show of that tour took place in Montreal where a warm and welcoming crowd opened their arms wide to shelter a young up and coming Nashville singer from the cold of an early December night.  I guess this is a good point to bring up the lost lens from my intro.  After Conner Smith opened his set with the title track to the recently released ‘The Storyteller’ EP, my camera began to show an error message.  The lens and camera were no longer communicating and I was in the midst of a cold sweat panic.  After furiously trying the few tricks I knew to bring the camera back to life, I had to admit defeat and retreated to my camera bag where a 70-200mm lens was waiting for me.  However, from the close confines of ‘The Pit’, a telephoto lens isn’t of much use.  I grabbed a few shots from the far reaches of our designated area, but am left to wonder about those that ended up getting missed.  Also missed, was much of Conner Smith’s performance.  I apologize for not being able to give a better description of what went down.  I can say that Conner Smith and his band were terrific during that portion of time when I wasn’t running around the pit trying to get to my lens.  They sounded great and were obviously having a great time up on the stage.  The Storyteller is a great song and a terrific choice to open the show with.  My mind may have been elsewhere but every other eye, as well as a good number of cell phones, were focused on the party that was taking place up on the stage.  A party that I missed, but hopefully will be able to attend again should Conner Smith and his crew make their way back to the Great White North again soon.  The photographs were all taken at f/3.2 while using various different shutter speeds, ISO settings and focal lengths.  Here are the rest of my photographs taken of Conner Smith while he performed on the Théâtre Beanfield stage.

If you would like to find out more about Conner Smith and his music, you can do so by following the link to his website.  If you would like to see the photographs that I took of Zach John Day, who performed earlier, you can do so by following the link.  A big thank you to Jake Kinney and Chris Kappy of Make Wake Management & Pioneer Artists and Christopher Gonda of V13 Media for getting me a pass to shoot the show.  As always, it is very much appreciated.  Conner Smith’s ‘The Storyteller’ tour came to an end in Montreal, but he will certainly be back on the road in the coming year.  Be sure to check him out when he plays near you.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a sad Country song to write about a photographer who drove in to the big city and had his heart broken by a broken lens.  Who knows, it might be a hit.