music — project blog — 10,000 Hours Photography

Back to the routine of work-school-life-lather-rinse-repeat, but this quarter, with double-time quantitative madness in the form of microeconomics and accounting. The mental stimulation is great, but I find that too much of the same sort of thinking results in me hitting a wall and getting stuck. Unless I get some kind of creative outlet (photography, cooking, etc.), productivity plummets and I feel like a hamster on a wheel - constantly running, but going nowhere fast. Speaking of productivity - what they say about productive and successful people getting up early is so true. As a natural night owl, it's really challenging for me to haul myself out of bed even with enough hours of sleep. It is interesting though, that I never actually regret getting up early because I end up being productive all day. It's just hard convincing my mostly-asleep self in the morning that dragging myself out of my warm bed is worth it.

In the spirit of productivity (since I managed to get in some work emails, homework, grocery shopping, and cleaning in today), I figured I might as well go for the quint-fecta and get in a blog post as well too. This series is from an awesome work event - a private One Republic show. Of course, this is one of those wish-I-could-have-my-cake-and-eat-it-too situations. I grabbed a spot right up against the stage, which meant getting to high-five Ryan Tedder, but it also meant limited angles from which to take photos and compose subjects. It definitely makes sense why major publications have multiple photographers on hand at a given event to get all of the different perspectives.

Active Shooting Hours: 1 Review Hours: 2 Hours To Date: 226

I was listening to an interesting segment from This American Life's podcast during my commute on Monday morning that explored the concept of time travel. The interviewers asked people if they had ever wanted to travel in time, backwards or forwards, why, etc. Eventually, they came to the conclusion that people overwhelmingly want to travel backwards and that desire to travel time is primarily a concern of the young, primarily to right a past wrong or do something different. I'll admit, science fiction has never really captivated me because I just can't set aside the laws that I perceive to govern the universe (even though I'm sure scientists are making breakthroughs every day). To me, it's just sort of a non-issue not really worth what-if-ing about. To the point where I've never actually seen Back to the Future (though my friends would argue that that's more a result of having spent my childhood under a rock, as I've not seen many pop culture films of the '80s and '90s). I also think my lack of desire to time travel just stems from the "logical" belief in the butterfly effect - the whole "travel back in time, step on a butterfly, and change the future" concept that Ray Bradbury explored in his short story, "A Sound of Thunder." Not to mention, I generally take a cynical view that part of the human existence is an inability to follow simple instructions like "don't stray from the path, moron" (read the story, it's a good one).

Anyway, that being said, I do enjoy a solid manhattan, doo-wop, and probably would have enjoyed the cultural offerings and society of the 1940s/1950s... sans the segregation, discrimination, glass ceilings, keeping up of appearances... but I do enjoy nights where I detour and escape to a classier cultural time before reality TV, idiotic celebrities becoming famous for their ridiculousness, and songs with few words and even less meaning.

So, I do sort of want to travel back. Don't get me wrong, I love my life and who I am today and it has nothing to do with going back and changing the cards were dealt. No, in going back, I actually mean revisiting an old abandoned hobby.

Enter, Scott Bradlee and Postmodern Jukebox, perhaps my favorite musical discovery of the past year. I love his style and ability to take pop music back in time and break all of the musical "rules." Having been largely dragged (sometimes kicking and screaming) through 12 years of piano lessons, assorted band instruments, and music theory, I struggled my way through seemingly arbitrary rules stemming all the way back to Bach that stifled my creativity on the keys. I hated repetitive etudes and scales so much that I eventually ran the other way as soon as I was out of grade school, even though I loved performing and feeling the music.

It seems absolutely crazy to think I can possibly carve out time for something else in my life right now, between working full-time, grad school part-time, some work on this 10,000 hour photography project, investing in my personal relationships, and keeping the whole system running. Despite the juggling act and planned chaotic running around, it's actually weirdly enjoyable to be so busy and ALIVE. So anyway, last night, I planned a deliberate break from my typical evenings of work catchup or studying and having some time for two passions: photography and music.

Finding out that PMJ was coming to play the House of Blues was actually totally a happy chance occurrence - I was sharing the YouTube link with someone and saw the post about a national tour, which I suspect was posted just that day since my tickets were like #8 or 9. It was an absolutely awesome show - hilarious and entertaining, definite recommend to anyone out there who can make it to a show!!

On a photographic note, I wanted to capture the raw experience and be as unobtrusive as possible to be respectful of the performers and my fellow audience members (after all, it's so rare to be able to photograph shows nowadays anyway), so I opened the aperture as wide as it would go and shot this series with no flash and completely manual focus since auto mode in the dark has a really annoying, bright LED to help the lens focus. I'm actually pleased that I'm making progress on the manual focus front, because it's quite hard to turn the focus ring just right and capture a completely sharp photo... which you'll generally fail to notice until you get it onto a big monitor. Additionally, this series is special to me just because this is one of literally three sessions over the past year and half where I've focused on people being my primary subjects as opposed to landscapes or objections... mostly because I find that people get weirded out when they know they're being photographed and it sort of ruins the honest emotive elements that make for truly special and iconic photography. I'm working on becoming a photographer that will be able to relax people into being themselves in front of a camera. On a separate note, I should definitely find more photographer-friendly shows to shoot - while the photos sometimes come out a little noisy, the lighting is awesome. And just a little noise seems to add just that touch of that sex, drugs, & rock & roll vibe.

Next post, we'll return from the detour and I'll post the last couple of Hawaii photo series I haven't gotten to blogging about yet... but, I do look forward to taking the occasional nights off to chase my passions. Also, public commitment, there will definitely be a baby grand piano in my future!!

Find Postmodern Jukebox Tour Info Here!!