Sharp and the blur ~ Jason Mraz and Landscapes

A week ago I went to see Jason Mraz in concert. The experience was thrilling. I love his music and enjoy the man's personality. Jason possesses a mellow, Zen-like personality that is encouraging and optimistic. As usual with concerts I find that in the beginning is when I have the most fanaticism, but once they're on stage I settle down and find myself watching their body language, learning about them by simply being in their presence. My friend Janine wanted to be there extra early to get a good view since the concert was a general admission. We were only 3 or 4 people away from him during the concert.



There was only one point that I really screamed in excitement during the concert. It was the strangest occurrence. I had said while waiting in line to my crew and the girls that were in front of us, "If I meet Jason Mraz. I'm going to tell him a joke. It's the only joke I know, and it's my muffin joke. There are two muffins sitting in an oven. One muffin says, 'wow it's getting hot in here.' The other muffin replies, "OH MY GOD A TALKING MUFFIN!" No one really though it was that funny either. During the concert Jason stops to get a drink, in the meantime the drummer TELLS MY JOKE! There is no way that he could of heard me. I start freaking out, screaming at the top of my lungs. I looked at the girls who were standing in front of us; they're like "OH MY GOD YOUR JOKE!" I went nuts. Then he continues, "Yeah it's the only joke I know." I'm sure that you can imagine my response. Anyway, I calmed down and continued to enjoy the rest of the concert.



For the fans, Jason whipped out a Polaroid camera of his own and began shooting photographs of the band. He would then whip the photos into the crowd. People would dive for them and you'd see little tackle crowds develop.



The part that I most appreciated about seeing Jason Mraz in concert was towards the end. He stopped to give the audience a special speech. I called it his Be Here Now speech. If you watch carefully you can see him respond to the audience after he asks them, "...cause we all here have something in common..." and the crowd goes nuts saying 'I love you Jason!' and so on. But he is humble and he stops for a moment. I don't think he wanted the credit. I think he wanted us to appreciate ourselves, but it seemed to be drowned in the normal fanaticism. I think it disappoints stars when they want to tell us to focus on our own well being rather than theirs. I did not cheer during the speech, I just continued to snap photos.




I took over 300 photographs of Jason while I was there. Being so close, and also being such a great photographer :), I got a lot of great photographs of Jason. Some of them are even poster worthy in my opinion. My favorites though were not the clean-cut photos that reveal every feature of his face but instead the blurs and photographs of motion. They were the photos that captured the expression of each moment. These are the photos that captured the true colors of the events and the feelings that they possessed. I've posted some of the best photographs of the night along with new landscape photographs that are intentionally out of focus. I wanted to capture the essence rather than the details.

People...

I have never taken the opportunity to photograph people before. Normally in my city pictures pedestrians occasionally find a way to pop into an image, thus proving that in the city you won't ever have a moment of privacy. In this instance though privacy was not my concern. I had no intentions of asking permission of my subjects, I just wanted to shoot pictures of people and see what it would be like.



I got the idea from my friend who's taking a photography course. One image she shared of her experience taking pictures of strangers caught an elderly woman, free of self consciousness, cleaning out her nostril with her pinkie. Somehow my friend managed to capture a multiple of images; miniature series of people in their casual lives. I wanted a try.



When friends asked what my plans were for the city I'd reply, "I just want to photograph people." Doing this in the city of New York makes things incredibly convenient for this first-time experience. Everyone clearly associates me to be a tourist. I have no problem with the label, constantly photographing skyscrapers. Little do they know my skyscraper photographs were to be used as examples for a lesson plan on linear perspective. Regardless, my disguise was perfect and I blended in perfectly.



I learned to be casual about things. I found maybe a street sign or a concrete wall to meter the light. For the most part that was extent of me holding the photograph up to my fact. In some I simply didn't look, I just photographed what was behind me be holding my camera in my hand, acting impatiently pretending I was waiting for people to move so I could snap an image of something else. Meanwhile I was constantly pushing the shutter button.



People freely walked by me not knowing they were being photographed. I think that I was possibly caught once. The main location that I photographed people was at St. Francis of Assisi's Church, across the street from Madison Square gardens. I had a request to stop there since that day was the yearly pet blessing. People came to the churched lined up near the entrance with poodles, scotts, a bird; mostly small animals. Most of the people seemed quite friendly. I stayed long enough to capture what I thought was a good first trial.



I also had taken a stop into St. Francis' church and also John the Baptist's. In the darkness I photographed the people praying and paying homage to the saints. For the most part I got away without getting caught, but from time to time people gave me glances. I tried to keep my photographing subtle and avoid too much motion in the silence of the churches.



In another instance I passed a mother and a small girl in an asian-styled attire. The red of the girls outfit seemed comical to the greys and browns of the city streets. I passed them and snapped a few images as I walked by. The majority of the other images were simply ones of people crossing the streets. There was nothing glamours or special about the images, merely an experiment. I enjoyed this and would like to try it again.