Kiss and Def Leppard do the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

I've never been to a KISS concert, and neither had another photographer shooting last night at Klipsch Music Center. He had started out following John Mellencamp, got into photographing Farm Aid in 2009, and has since covered so many acts, but not KISS. We had also heard that KISS was quite friendly to photographers, doing their thing so close to us in the pit and, of course, providing pyrotechnics and painted faces. He was excited, jumping up and down a bit before the show started, and he made me excited, too.

After our two songs were up, on our walk back to the holding room, we were kids in a candy store. We were looking through our photos, gaping and hollering and yelling, "I got it!" and throwing awesomes every which way. It was so much fun.

And that was before KISS and Def Leppard did the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.

This is the sort of assignment that gets you excited about the whole idea of photography. This is like a hole-in-one in golf; you don't get many assignments like this, but you do your best to get them, and the promise of one in the future keeps you going.

In other news: I took the MCAT on Thursday. I can now return from the life of a studious hermit to a relatively normal existence.

(There are no photos of Def Leppard, even though what I heard of their pre-KISS concert was face-melting, because they didn't approve any photographers. They were out for the challenge, though, so there's that.)