Passion Renewed

Last night Amy and I went to see Steven Curtis Chapman in concert. It was the 4th time we have seen him since we got married. I had never seen him in concert before March of 2002, but I had heard of him and had one or two of his CDs. I also got to see him at a manager's conference when I worked for Family Christian Stores.
We had a special surprise in that our friends David and Leslie from our small group were given tickets about an hour and a half before showtime. We called them to make sure they knew how to get to the church where the concert was being held and to find out if they had general admission or artist circle. It turned out they had artist circle, like us, so we saved them some room on our row.
Opening the show was local band Fee, featuring local praise leader Steve Fee from Northpoint Community Church. It was loud. It was fun, and it was a worship experience in a concert setting. In fact it was so loud we got to move up a row because the people there cleared out as a wall of speakers was about 10 feet from us.
Steven introduced the show, which started with his son's band doing a little worship set. Then Fee performed for about 35 minutes. Steven came back out and introduced a segment on adoption while they changed some of the stage and then he came back out with his full band, which included son Caleb on guitar and vocals and son Will Frankllin on drums.
This was probably the best Steven concert we have seen and when I titled this post Passion Renewed, it is because I renewed my passion for concert photography. It was my first chance to shoot a concert using my digital SLR camera, and I brought the new lens I got with some Christmas giftcards. Below you will see a slide show featuring about 130 of the photos I shot last night, so it will take a while to see them all, and Amy added a few captions. I had to work today, but here it is.