Musical Interlude

"A Woman's Eye," a photography exhibit featuring IPC Visual Lab students Jenny Babot Romney, Jennifer Kay, Sacha Suarez and Nanci Thomas, highlights life in South Florida as seen through the eyes of four women exploring their daily paths with their cameras.








 The fifth female element at the April 21 exhibit opening at the ACND Gallery of Art was a performance by singer Shenita Hunt, whose spiritual and soulful repertoire added another aesthetic layer to the art on display. Where the IPC Visual Lab students explored visual storytelling, Shenita used musical storytelling tools to showcase a woman's perspective.

 

The challenge I had was finding ways to include the photography as I shot Shenita's performance. We had spent all day hanging and lighting the frames, transforming a small, unimpressive room into a glowing art gallery, and I didn't want to neglect that work while Shenita performed. What I found as I focused on Shenita grooving through the gallery was that her movements made the hanging artwork a little more alive.

 

 Several weeks later, I shot some of the Zakafest performances at the Little Haiti Cultural Center. The Haitian music experience was enhanced by the lighting on the stage. The stage is really just a short platform in front of a mural of a Haitian market scene. In the rich red, blue and green lighting, the figures in the mural seemed to blend with the musicians and dancers on the stage. The colored lights gave the outdoor performance a warmth that's usually lost under bright white spotlights.

The Rhythm Foundation's "Big Night in Little Haiti" will be on June 15th, 2012 from 6 - 10pm at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.  I will be there will you?

Going Home Part 2

Third Day:  Since we all live in separate parts of the country now and we rarely get to celebrate any holiday all together, our family's tradition is to celebrate whatever holiday happens to be nearby. This visit, we're dying Easter eggs, even though Easter was a few weeks ago. It's a fun activity for my mother and my niece on a rainy afternoon. Later we make a field trip to the garden supply store, where Bella has been promised some playtime on their model swing-set. Unfortunately, the swing-set has been elevated out of reach. Bella rolls with it and joins her father selecting plants and herbs for their garden. She likes activities she can do with the grown-ups help, like playing guitar. In my shooting, I'm still giving the family group space so I can fill each frame, and I'm looking for light to illuminate Bella's little hands compared with my mother's or brother's hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fourth Day:  Today was Aaron's Christening, and I think I would have found the ceremony easier to shoot if he wasn't my nephew. I had an assignment for IPC Visual Lab, but on top of that, I had whatever Aaron's grandmothers assigned to me, too: Get the photo of the priest baptizing Aaron with the water, get the photo of your brother and the baby in their suits, get the photo of the baby with both the grandmothers, come take this picture, come take that picture. 

 

 

 

It was easier to give in than to approach shooting like another assignment. The one picture I had especially wanted to take was one of my brother and his godfather holding a picture from my brother's Baptism. The album holding that old picture also had my brother's godfather's favorite picture of my father -- he's standing between my mother and my brother's godmother, and they're laughing because for some reason my father is grinning with a cherry tomato in his mouth. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No one remembers the joke, but the tomato still elicited more laughter and interest than the sideburns my brother's godfather was sporting in the other picture. With all the directions being given to me, I wish I had been better about directing the people holding those photos. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That really was the challenge of the weekend, how to frame the documentary images I intended to make while trying or being directed to try to take "nice pictures" of the family.

Going Home Part 1

First day:  There's a new member of our family: Aaron, my brother's son. My mother and I have flown to Illinois for the baby's Baptism, and on the first day of our visit, the only activity we have planned is to bask in his cuteness. Aaron doesn't move all that much at the moment, so it's easy to sit my mother down with the baby in her arms for the first time while I find the best angle to catch the light. My mother's attention is all on Aaron, and it's one of the only times I'll be able to  frame images without having someone turn and smile for the camera. The rest of the weekend will require planning around naps and meals and my 2-year-old niece's energy, but at the start, the trip is a quiet introduction to a new little person.

 

Second Day:  The second day of the trip is the time to get reacquainted with people we don't get to see all that much, since we live in different parts of the country. My mother gets a tour of my brother's house to see whatever upgrades he's made since her last visit and all the new toys my niece has acquired (on this visit, the big addition is a trampoline in the garage). The other ritual of grandma's visit is the bags of presents, toys and clothes, that she brings the kids. Each item is examined and explained, including the multiple christening suits for Aaron that my mother has bought -- he only needs one, but she's bought several styles and sizes. I only brought a 50mm lens with me, and I find myself hanging back as everyone else talks or plays so that I can fit them in the frame.

 

 

 

 

My niece is well-trained to say "CHEESE" with a wide grin whenever she sees a camera (and then she wants you to turn your camera around so she can see the picture), and though she's very cute, I'm trying to see my relatives' relationships in the frames, not just cheesy smiles. I see history, too: my brother juggling his daughter's Play-doh the way he used to juggle as a kid, my mother coloring with Bella the way my grandfather used to color with me. I'm either shooting from the floor or from the stairs, watching my niece crash a photo of my brother and his son and then insist on dancing. Aaron, meanwhile, is most interested in his mobile.

 

A Mother's Plea

"Nobody can bring our children back. But it would bring us comfort if we can spare other mothers the pain we will feel on Mother's Day and every day for the rest of our lives," Sybrina Fulton said. "I'm asking you to join Florida by asking the governor of your state to reexamine similar stand your ground' laws throughout the nation to keep our children safe."

Fulton said this weekend would be very difficult for her.  "This will be my first Mother's Day without my son Trayvon," she said. "I know it will be hard. But my faith, family and friends will pull me through."

In early April, activists and community members in Miami's Little Haiti organized a protest march calling for George Zimmerman's arrest in the death of Trayvon Martin. The march was one of many protests happening around the country at the time, as the investigation into Trayvon's shooting death made national headlines. Another, more formal protest was held in Miami's Bayfront Park days later, with speeches by politicians and civil rights leaders, including the Revs. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. In Little Haiti, people didn't gather for speeches.

A crowd met at a statue honoring Toussaint Louverture, collected behind three men waving American and Haitian flags and another three men in wheelchairs, and then set off for a march led by a police car. The crowd shouted the same slogans heard at other protests, and some people carried the same signs seen in news reports, but the protest had a more personal feel to it than the Bayfront event would have. The crowd was speaking, instead of listening to speeches.

 

I planned to shoot while staying toward the front of the march, but I almost didn't shoot anything -- both the memory cards in my DSLR malfunctioned just as the march was about to get started. Luckily, I had brought my Nikon FM2 along as backup, loaded with a roll of black and white film and a 20mm lens. Instead of just being able to shoot frame after frame, rapid fire style, without worrying about running out of memory, I had just 36 frames to cover this march before running out of film. I stayed near the front, trying to isolate individual moments and faces in the crowd as they strolled through Little Haiti. Trying to find a way to focus on the dark hoodies some of the marchers wore in the bright afternoon sunlight, I caught the sun's glare. 

The film -- Kentmere 400 ISO -- wasn't a stylistic choice; it just happened to be the cheapest pack of black and white film at the time that I ordered it from B&H. The images came out more grainy than I expected, but I like the tone of the film, and I think the gritty texture lends itself to the Little Haiti scene. Having a memory card malfunction didn't ruin the shooting opportunity at all.

As of May 14, George Zimmerman was awaiting trial on a charge of second-degree murder for shooting Trayvon on Feb. 26. Zimmerman told police he fired in self-defense after Trayvon pinned him to the ground and beat him. Trayvon's father, family lawyers and critics say Zimmerman is guilty of racial profiling and murder. On May 14, prosecutors filed court documents identifying witnesses they plan to call and several pieces of evidence they plan to introduce at trial.

Photo Ops

Always Opportunities to Capture Images

Kind of neat time right now for my son, Elijah.  He's a ninth grader/freshman at Coral Reef Senior High School in South Dade.  It's a good school and my son is their Drama Magnet program.  He enjoys performing and the arts in general but has a strong interest in Film Making.  So recently there was a Dade County High School Video Competition to create a one minute commercial to discourage high school students from drinking and driving.  Well, Elijah's entry WON!  His video will be featured as D.Y.F.I.T. (Drug Free Youths in Town) campaign video on the subject for 2012.  It was very exciting for us!

In winning the competition, Elijah will be rewarded $500 Cash Prize and an Award Plaque at their annual banquet coming up on May 11th.  That's a lot of money for a young teenager to get all in one sum!  He's been learning to play the guitar and absolutely loving it.  In the process, he's had to borrow or use whatever guitar is available.  So he hasn't been learning on a "fine instrument".  I did not want to invest in a guitar and have him lose interest, and later find this few hundred dollars instrument collecting dust in a corner of his room.  What I did tell him was that he would value his first guitar far more if he had to pay for it with his own money. Also mentioned that a Summer job would be one way to start that process.

As you can probably guess by now, he wants to use that Cash Prize to purchase his first guitar.  I can't argue with that because he DID WORK HARD to create, edit and submit the video.  This leads me to the writing of this blog.  Elijah asked if we could go to a Guitar store so that he could handle a few guitars to help him narrow his choices down of what he could buy next week.  Being a male that his kicked a few tires in new car showrooms prior to buying a car, I understood where he was coming from.

 So off we went to the Guitar Center on Kendall Drive, a local mecca for aspiring musicians.  This was completely foreign to me.  I never had an interest in learning to play a musical instrument and knew nothing about the various types of guitars and believe me, there are quite a few.  My son, Elijah immediately engaged with a sales person and they set him up with a guitar within his said price range, hooked it up to an amp and walked away and allowed him to just play.  He was in pure bliss as he caressed the body of this beautifully finished guitar and moved his fingers along the spine creating sounds I immediately recognized from an old Rolling Stone's song. 

He looked up at me with this million dollar smile and it made me remember those delicious little smiles of his when he was 2 and 3 years of age.  It was a pretty special moment.  I could see he was truly enjoying the moment and now just enveloping himself in the making of music with this guitar.  The sale man had brought two others for him to try.  This was his time, and I didn't want to rush him in any way.  But I had little I could add to the conversation of picking a guitar other than "this one is pretty!"  So I told to take his time and sample a few, I was just going to look around.

I immediately began to notice how beautiful these instruments were!  There were wonderful lines and shapes all around me.  Armed with my trusty iPhone, I decided that it might be a nice way to pass the time and document this pretty cool first for my son.  It brought memories back of when I used to shoot every waking moment of him, especially in his first two years.  But I didn't want to pester while he was enjoying his time playing.  So I focused on the shapes that caught my eye.

I loved what I was finding and saw the art and attention to detail that went into these instruments.  It made it easier to understand why some of these were over a few thousand dollars.  At every turn, I saw a photo opportunity

That's when it dawned on me that there are photo opportunities ALL THE TIME!!  Most of us, myself included, become desensitized by our surrounding and just take them for granted.  We just walk, drive, text past beauty around all the time.  I looked around to see if anyone else was appreciating how gorgeous some of these instruments were.  Those that were playing an instrument were completely submersed in the music they were making.  While other 'co-pilots' like me were busy checking their Facebook status.  "Wow" I thought, it was disheartening to witness others not taking in what was so prominently in front of them!

 
It made me realize that I was very fortunate to have made this simple, yet overwhelmingly overlooked insight.  I was happy to be there in the moment, and finding a way to share with my son that I know he will appreciate years from now when he looks at these images and recalls the day we went shopping for his first guitar.  He'll remember the sheen from the finishes of the guitars, the wonderful curves and grain of the wood.

Plus I was able to sneak in a shot of him jamming to the one he gravitated to most!

Carry your camera, life happens at every turn and it's beautiful!

Posted by Zeus at 10:36 AM 0 comments