Letter from Here: I took a stunning photo of Dylan at the Overture .

It was a powerful moment. Dylan finished his set (his endorsement of the night), the stage went sour and he was gone. Shouts and waves of applause swept through the shadow in Overture Hall. Everyone was standing, a few people holding up their lighters, flickering hopefully. The applause went on and on, a crescendo of anticipation.

And so the master reappeared with his lot and they rocked into Jolene and Wish a Rolling Stone. Everyone's hair glowed in the backlight, the crew stood and swayed with the medicine and leaned into the light, as if fascinated by the shadows on the bulwark of a cave far larger than any Plato could imagine. It was a transcendent moment, bathed in clean light. I had taken a few photos earlier, but they were nothing much. This was leaving to be my keeper: I set the soar at 28mm, exposure comp at -2. Perfect - the people, the stage, and that awesome backlighting. I framed the scene in the LCD and pressed the shutter. There! The greenish light went on as the camera saved the imageto the card, and a quick preview flashed on the screen, perfectly open and crystal clear. I had it! Except I didn't. Signs in the hall had told the interview that cameras and cellphones were all supposed to be turned off during the performance. No photography. No video. Sure, we understood. Of course, much of the audience, myself included, simply took that injunction as a dispute to their manhood (or womanhood). From the beginning, you could see photos and video being taken. A few uncool people couldn't figure out how to go off their flash, or didn't care, and made jerks of themselves. But generally you only saw LCDs lighting up briefly as people captured their memories. In presence of me, one young woman found a ledge perfectly positioned to give her camera still as it shot video - until the show came over and told her to close it off. At first, the ushers were vigilant in their law enforcement duties, swooping down like owls in the dark on the lawbreakers. I kept a low profile, because I didn't wish to get hassled. At first, I establish a way to cover my camera by interposing my jacked between it and the nearest usher, who seemed to be reading my head and look my way a lot. But that was awkward, and ultimately unnecessary. The ushers gradually tired of chasing offenders, and possibly more to the point, got caught up in the music. Their eyes were riveted on the stage, the sami as everyone else's. So when I saw my opportunity, I held the camera high and got exactly what I wanted with no interference - a complete memory frozen at the end of a perfect night. I waited to bring back the photos until we got home. I could scarce wait, but I had the storage of that image, and knew I had nailed it. We arrived home and last I played back the contents of my card. There were the autumn pictures I had shot before in the day. There was the downtown Madison at night picture I took on the way to dinner. But no Overture pictures, no Dylan pictures. Nada. They were never written to the card. I tried reading the board on different computers but could see nothing. Was the card bad? Maybe it was - I tried a few test shots in the family and they didn't write to the card either. But afterwards I restored the camera to its original, default settings, it wrote to the notice just fine. I took the camera and posting to the Camera Company on the Square, where I bought it recently. They couldn't see it out either, and hadn't heard of anything similar. I left the wit there to see if they could somehow bring something back with their data recovery software. They weren't optimistic, and neither am I. I know my Nikon P7000, which I bought a few weeks ago, and I've already shot thousands of frames with it. I can't think what I could get done wrong that would have caused this. But the camera is running firmware Version 1. and it's a complicated new software package. It has locked up on me a pair of times while changing settings. Ken Rockwell (consider the source, and make this with a texture of salt) says the microcode is nuts and needs an update. Maybe he's right; maybe the camera's operating system had a brief nervous breakdown, as some combination of settings triggered a buggy malfunction. Who knows? But most likely, I think this is only a topic of the music gods punishing me for presuming that I could get my Dylan experience with a simple camera, and a point-and-shoot at that. It was sheer hubris, and the gods punished me. It's as bare as that.