{"id":566,"date":"2010-11-20T11:44:51","date_gmt":"2010-11-20T16:44:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/?p=566"},"modified":"2016-11-25T09:31:20","modified_gmt":"2016-11-25T14:31:20","slug":"sonia-leigh","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/20\/sonia-leigh\/","title":{"rendered":"Sonia Leigh"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.com\/\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/referenced_images-other_sites\/JSD-101111-Joe_Nichols-Big_Rapids-054.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"   alignleft\" style=\"margin-right: 4px; margin-left: 4px;\" title=\"Chris at work\" src=\"http:\/\/jondiener.com\/\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/referenced_images-other_sites\/JSD-101111-Joe_Nichols-Big_Rapids-054.jpg\" alt=\"Front of House Sound Engineer Chris Diener mixing for Joe Nichols at Ferris State University\" width=\"160\" height=\"240\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Last week, I had the chance to visit briefly with my son again, while they were on a tour stop at Ferris State University in Big Rapids, MI. \u00a0And while I love shooting Chris at work, along with Joe Nichols and his band (The &#8220;We Ain&#8217;t Got No Damn Band Randys&#8221;), I decided not to do much of that this trip. After all, I&#8217;ve already shot about ten or eleven of Joe&#8217;s shows over the last couple years, with pretty much unlimited access.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.com\/\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/referenced_images-other_sites\/JSD-101111-Joe_Nichols-Big_Rapids-098.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"  alignright\" style=\"margin: 4px;\" title=\"Mixing for joe Nichols\" src=\"http:\/\/jondiener.com\/\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/referenced_images-other_sites\/JSD-101111-Joe_Nichols-Big_Rapids-098.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>So I didn&#8217;t feel like I would be shooting anything new or unique at this show. Plus, my wife was with me and I didn&#8217;t feel like deserting her for an hour or so, to go run around the arena shooting Joe&#8217;s set. \u00a0Instead, I shot a few band images from back near the sound board, as well as a few of Chris at work in front of a large Midas console. (It was incredibly dark near the sound board, so I had my camera&#8217;s ISO cranked to about 4000 for some shots of Chris, resulting in fairly noisy images.)<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.photoshelter.com\/gallery-image\/Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-MI-November-2010\/G00002b8M3bxl7Q4\/I0000eLjYgJ4A3L4\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"margin: 4px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Sonia Leigh\" src=\"http:\/\/www.photoshelter.com\/img-get\/I0000eLjYgJ4A3L4\/s\/240\/361\/JSD-101111-Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-217.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>But like any photog worth his salt, I couldn&#8217;t just sit through the warm-up act with my camera gear sitting idly by. The opener was a singer-songwriter from Atlanta named <a title=\"Sonia Leigh's website\" href=\"http:\/\/sonialeigh.com\/site\/\" target=\"_blank\">Sonia Leigh<\/a>. \u00a0Honestly, I had never heard of her, so I wasn&#8217;t sure what to expect. \u00a0Let&#8217;s just say, I think you&#8217;ll be hearing her name in music circles quite a bit more in the future. \u00a0She&#8217;s a young, scrappy, tomboy-ish little thing with a voice bigger than her diminutive frame would suggest.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.photoshelter.com\/gallery-image\/Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-MI-November-2010\/G00002b8M3bxl7Q4\/I0000uPWQESRZJho\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" style=\"margin: 4px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Sonia Leigh\" src=\"http:\/\/www.photoshelter.com\/img-get\/I0000uPWQESRZJho\/s\/360\/239\/JSD-101111-Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-157.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"360\" height=\"239\" \/><\/a>As I started shooting her set, I tried to dissect her musical influences, and more specifically, which other singers she reminded me of. I detected (in no particular order) Melissa Etheridge, a little Indigo Girls, a touch of Bonnie Raitt, a splash of Janis Joplin, maybe some Tanya Tucker, a little Sheryl Crow, some Brandi Carlile, and much more. \u00a0Her songs covered the usually country fare &#8211; livin&#8217;, lovin&#8217;, drinkin&#8217;, fast cars, and broken hearts. The basic band (guitar, bass, drums) behind her smoky voice and acoustic guitar, was a natural fit for her no-frills music.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.photoshelter.com\/gallery-image\/Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-MI-November-2010\/G00002b8M3bxl7Q4\/I0000b6YPwFJkky8\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" style=\"margin: 4px; border: 0px initial initial;\" title=\"Sonia Leigh\" src=\"http:\/\/www.photoshelter.com\/img-get\/I0000b6YPwFJkky8\/s\/240\/361\/JSD-101111-Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-032.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" width=\"199\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a>She won over the crowd pretty early on, and seemed to keep them entertained for the duration of the set. I moved around the middle of the arena floor shooting Sonia and the band. \u00a0While I could have pushed my way through the crowd to the front of the stage, I didn&#8217;t really feel I could have gotten any better images there. \u00a0It&#8217;s always interesting and exciting shooting an act I have never heard &#8211; I think it causes me to pay more attention to the performers to try and predict what will happen next. \u00a0I felt I walked away from venue with some pretty solid shots, and I learned about a new, up-and-coming artist in the process.<\/p>\n<p>The full photo gallery of images from the show can be seen <a title=\"Sonia Leigh Image Gallery\" href=\"http:\/\/jondiener.photoshelter.com\/gallery\/Sonia-Leigh-Big-Rapids-MI-November-2010\/G00002b8M3bxl7Q4\/\" target=\"_blank\">at my website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>But like any photog worth his salt, I couldn&#8217;t just sit through the warm-up act with my camera gear sitting idly by. The opener was a singer-songwriter from Atlanta named Sonia Leigh.  &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/20\/sonia-leigh\/\" class=\"more-link\"><span class=\"readmore\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Sonia Leigh<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[8,11,43,23,26,32],"class_list":["post-566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-photography","tag-band","tag-concert","tag-country-music","tag-music-2","tag-photography-2","tag-show"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=566"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1621,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/566\/revisions\/1621"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jondiener.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}