My husband is a music lover and as a result I attend a lot of concerts with him. (I know--tough life!) The Ottawa Bluesfest is one of his favourite events because of the amazing line-ups they have each year. The 2018 season had Brian Adams as one of the opening night acts. Since the Bluesfest has a rule that no one is allowed to bring in cameras with detachable lenses (other then the photographers they have working for them of course) then I am left with one of two choices--don't take any pictures (which is not going to happen) or learn to use other cameras and devices that take pictures that do not have the capabilities of my SLR cameras. Suddenly shutter speeds, ASA levels, f stops and how the device zooms in and responds to movement by the photographer, etc are issues that need to be addressed and reconciled in order to get the picture you have in mind. Needless to say shooting at the Bluesfest the last few evenings has been a bit of a learning curve for me. Below are some images I've captured using a Sony digital camera I borrowed from my daughter. It has the ability to shoot up to ASA 3200. I needed to shoot at 1/160 at F5.6 to get enough light and be able to stop action. I also had to zoom in because of where we were in the crowd. The images on the camera screen appeared in focus but any images larger then the 2 x 3 screen began to pixelate. The end result was some interesting pictures which immediately made me think of Impressionism. This makes me laugh because of this quote I found in the Wikapedia information on Impressionism:
"The development of Impressionism can be considered partly as a reaction by artists to the challenge presented by photography, which seemed to devalue the artist's skill in reproducing reality. Both portrait and landscape paintings were deemed somewhat deficient and lacking in truth as photography "produced lifelike images much more efficiently and reliably".[26]
In spite of this, photography actually inspired artists to pursue other means of creative expression, and rather than compete with photography to emulate reality, artists focused "on the one thing they could inevitably do better than the photograph—by further developing into an art form its very subjectivity in the conception of the image, the very subjectivity that photography eliminated".[26] The Impressionists sought to express their perceptions of nature, rather than create exact representations. This allowed artists to depict subjectively what they saw with their "tacit imperatives of taste and conscience".[27] Photography encouraged painters to exploit aspects of the painting medium, like colour, which photography then lacked: "The Impressionists were the first to consciously offer a subjective alternative to the photograph".[26] "
Photography has been called painting with light and these are my 'paintings' from the Brian Adams concert last Thursday night. Enjoy..
Brian Adams Impressionism-1 2018
Brian Adams Impressionism-2 2018
The videos playing behind the artists make for some interesting photos.
This image and the next one are two of my favourites from the night. The video image is so large and has a surreal feeling because of the way it projects on the screen. It's Adams singing live yet it's simply an image of him singing--not the real person. The real person is the tiny creature next to the big image. For me this photo captures stardom in one picture--The Brian Adams that the crowd is watching is bigger then life--people at the concerts often spend the whole time looking at the video screens and not the live performer. But the real man--the real Brian Adams is the small man down in the corner of the video image --a man who just had his father die recently and his mother suffer a stroke, who dropped out of school at 16, and who's now almost 60. A man who seems bigger then life but is really just human like you and me.
I'm calling this my Brian Adams record album picture LOL
This girl along with a number of others (mainly women although Adams asked for anyone who was a great dancer to come and join in the fun) were dancing for one of the songs and so their images made it to the main screen during the concert. They both look like they are having so much fun!
Brian Adams Impressionism-3 2018
Brian Adams Impressionism-4 2018
Brian Adams Impressionism-5 2018
The Three Amigos
The video really is an itricate part of the whole show.
Brian Adams Impressionism-6 2018
I love this because when you look at it your eye immediately does to the large image of the two men singing on the left side of the picture....but the real peopl are across the bottom.