Rufus Wainwright at Ravinia, June 18, 2004

I'm really happy about this picture because it was taken from the back of the pavilion, where to the naked eye Rufus looked like a tiny dot on the stage. Hooray for my fancy camera.

This was my first time at Ravinia and it's an experience. Unlike most "pavilion plus lawn seats" concert venues, at Ravinia you can't see the stage from any part of the lawn. Instead, the concert is piped in from dozens of speakers all over the huge lawn. As a picnic venue, it's great. As a concert venue, it's a little odd -- to a degree, the concert might as well be recorded or broadcast from Cleveland or something. Most telling, I think, is that hardly anyone on the lawn clapped at the end of songs.