Posts Tagged 'concert'
10
Madi and I took the kids on a bit of a cultural expedition yesterday. She’d heard about the Kloofendal concert on the Jozikids website, and we thought it would a nice relaxing way to spend our Sunday afternoon.
And it was SO much fun! Even the kids enjoyed it.
The concert was the first one to be held in the Amphitheatre at Kloofendal Nature Reserve in years, and I don’t think it was very well advertised because the crowds… well… there was no crowd. That suited us just fine though, cos the kids could actually run amok without us worrying too much about them. It was also a bit of a strange mixture of music, but anyhoo, it was a huge amount of fun for all of us.
First up was a Marimba band from the Sparrow Village. Sparrow cares for families that have been affected by HIV, and all the band members have grown up in the village.
I must just add, that the girl singing in the marimba band had THE most incredible voice. It was simply WOW!
Then came Little Sister. I haven’t heard about the band in forever!! It was so very cool to hear them play again, and they also played 3 new tracks from a new album they’re releasing this year. A lot of people I’ve spoken today couldn’t place their music… remember “Dear Abby (One night of passion)”. I was hoping to list more, but I actually can’t find any more of their songs online. Anyhoo… they were good 
And the 300 odd people that were there enjoyed it too, and they had everyone singing along to the music and dancing too!
And last but not least, this little guy stole my heart, he was so very cute!
It was awesome sitting in the sun with a friend, having excellent cheese and biscuits and fruit and listening to good music … and not to forget all the singing along that went with it. And watching the kids just running and laughing and playing with their friends.
It was an AWESOME Sunday afternoon!
Recommended Reading
27
It was Connor’s very first school concert this morning, and I took plenty of photos, as you can imagine. There didn’t seem to be much of a theme to the concert, as every class in the nursery school did something vastly different. The concert was held in a local primary school hall, so that was a treat for the kids too… they had walked to the school every morning this week to rehearse (Connor didn’t stop talking about that).
As you can see, he was a lion… a very noisy roaring lion 
His class were dressed up as animals and they sang “Circle of Life”…
… and Barney’s “I love you”
And then after the next class did their act, his class went back onto the stage with the Mickey Mouse class act to perform another song. I can’t resist showing you some of these ones, even though I cannot remember what they sang!
Connor is watching what the girl next to him is doing… but check out the kids that are in midair jumps!
… and then he got into the swing of things too…
For those who are interested in how I took these… I was really far back in the audience, and used my Sigma 70-300mm f4-5.6 APO with my 580EXII flash attached to the camera. I was shooting manually at ISO400, and for a HUGE change all my photos were perfectly sharp… not even sightly hazy like they’ve been from that lens lately. The only change I made to my technique was using a single focus point, instead of setting the camera to auto focus points after I read a blog post this week by Amy Wentzel about how she uses that method to ensure her subjects are sharp! It was such a simple change! This might just be the trick to using this lens!
These are definitely my Weekly Winners.
Recommended Reading
12
We went to Emmerentia gardens yesterday to watch the Johnny Clegg concert. It was part of the Old Mutual Encounters series of concerts that are held every month in the park. What a fabulous way to spend the afternoon!! It’s such a pity it was so very cold.
I don’t have very many photos, because the closer it got to Johnny Clegg actually singing, the more people were warned not to take photos, and in fact I got stopped from taking photos of the supporting act The Allen Wood Project by some of the security guards… oh well… their loss!!
The next 2 photos were taken by Bradley… aren’t they good?!! Not bad for a 6-year old!
It was the kids very first concert (apart from school concerts), and even though Connot got tired and ratty because it was over his nap time, we all had a ball! I definitely want to go the September Beautiful Creatures concert as it’s for the kids and they know ALL the words to all songs on ALL the Beautiful Creatures CDs. Hopefully I won’t get stopped there!