The Ship of Theseus is not just a ship, and it’s not just an object made up of ship parts; it’s an idea perceived as a (specific) ship. And it’s not just an idea perceived as that specific ship, it’s an idea that has continuity from its initial construction, even if not one single original ship part is still in place.
Now let’s say this ship was founded in 1934.
As part of my Photographic Essay course at the Arts Council of Princeton, I was tasked with creating a set of photographs with an underlying theme or narrative. I was looking for a topic somewhat esoteric, but my creative mind just wasn’t functioning well during this particular time frame. I narrowed my choices down to something related to the Delaware and Raritan Canal or a singing competition show supported by Reid Sound at Rider University. Even after starting with the latter, I kept an open mind and prepared to take the photographic essay in a different direction to protect against the possibility that I could not spam the entire event from start to finish with enough images to tell some sort of story.
The event moved forward, and I committed myself to the project. “The R Factor” mimicked the popular television show “The X Factor.” More than twenty student performers from the university auditioned for a chance to make the final performance. I started with these auditions, taking photographs to document the progress of some of the performers as well of the event itself.
The photography presented the usual challenges. Stages and auditoriums are dark locations, and a spotlight can easily throw off metering. I pumped up the ISO to compensate for the lighting. In the hallways where performers were waiting and warming up before the final performance, the fluorescent lighting played with the color balance.
There is a good amount of talent on the Rider University campus. The R Factor did a great job of showcasing some of the school’s best performers. Here are a few images from the events; more photographs are available on Flickr, many of which were not included in the essay. A slideshow of the essay follows these photos.
After the jump, I present a slideshow representing the photographic essay in its current form. The essay as a whole is relatively successful, telling the story of the event, although I did not use any text for narrative.
Sir Bob Geldof was Craig Ferguson’s guest on The Late Late Show last night. I watched the interview earlier today. Craig had seen Bob perform with the Boomtown Rats in 1977, at a time and in a location featuring social unrest. Young people, particularly young musicians, had an opportunity to react to popular culture and its musical interpretation (disco, pop) with punk music. Throughout the twentieth century, after the technology for performing and recording music became accessible, the younger generation used it to rebel against the status quo. Punk rock, and particularly the thoughtful punk rockers like Bob Geldof and John Lydon, shaped this counterculture.
In the interview, Bob and Craig agree that we are experiencing a formative period in history, one that will be viewed by historians centuries in the future. Thanks to social unrest throughout the world, money flowing into emerging markets, and dominant global power shifting away from the United States, society may be at a tipping point. I don’t think anyone can properly identify what history will choose to focus on until well after the fact, but assuming it’s true, where is today’s counterculture? Specifically, where is the music that can be identified as representative of today’s social change? Why does no one have anything to say about this?
Commercialism is quick to latch onto anything new these days, and that may be why none of today’s music seems revolutionary. A counterculture is commercialized so quickly — take hip-hop, for example — that it doesn’t have time to stand for something and no longer means anything. With artists concerned about making a living in this country, there isn’t a lot of opportunity to do something untested. Maybe we need to start looking elsewhere to find the next social movement to become representative of a generation, perhaps the Middle East, north Africa, or China.
Bob mentions how terrible the popular music was at that time, and there had to be a change. Today’s pop music should generate the same sort of reaction, but where are today’s music rebels? Watch the interview with Bob Geldof after the break.
Last Tuesday, I ventured back into my college state of Delaware for the first time in many years. After broadcasting a request for models among my friends on Facebook several months ago, one of the gracious responses was from Catherine Short de Arce, a friend of mine from the University of Delaware. Cathy was a vocal music major when we attended, and she followed this passion and is now a successful opera singer. At the bottom of this post, I’ve included one of her recordings.
We scheduled the photo shoot in Wilmington’s Grand Opera House, a great venue for dramatic images featuring an opera singer. The Sarah Bernhardt room, where we set up and shot almost all of the photographs, was a perfect location. Cathy came fully prepared with a team to help with her hair and make-up, as well as a representative from the department store Boscov’s to help with the various outfits provided by the store.
This was my first attempt bringing my portable equipment on location. I traveled with a Canon 1D Mark III, with an XTi for emergency back-up, and two Bowens Gemini monolights with umbrellas. For lenses, I brought a Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM, Canon EF 100mm f/2.8L IS USM Macro, and Sigma 24-70mm f/2.8 IF EX DG HSM AF, but used the 24-70mm almost exclusively. I also had a variety of accessories to help with the shoot, like PocketWizards for triggering the strobes and a white/silver reflector.
I learned quite a bit from the seven hours I spent at the Grand Opera House. Here are a few of my take-aways.
Post-processing is an important part of modern photography. Film purists often don’t like PhotoShop because they believe the skill of a photographer is in getting the best picture in camera. It’s always good to strive for getting the best capture, but even the best film photographers worked creatively with chemicals and dodged and burned the exposure when printing. In PhotoShop, I take the time to reduce the appearance of shiny skin, make sure there is the level of contrast I expect, and make sure the colors most accurately reflect the colors as seen by human eyes — all things even the best digital sensor doesn’t do well.
Update! I have finished finalizing the photographs from this shoot. You can see a select set of photographs in my portfolio, and here’s a slideshow. Following the slideshow are a few photographs from the shoot prior to processing.
Amy and I visited Nassau Presbyterian Church to see Dar Williams to perform in support of the thirtieth anniversary of Isles, Inc. Isles is a non-profit community development organization with a mission to foster sustainability. I’ve been enjoying Dar’s singing and songwriting since 1995 or so. Her songs were frequently played on WXPN 88.5 and I quickly became a fan.
I first saw Dar live at the Columbia Folk Festival in Columbia, Pennsylvania, on June 15, 1996. (Thank you to Internet Archive Wayback Machine for helping me figure that out!) For those unfamiliar with Dar Williams, she is easily the best contemporary singer-songwriter, with poetry rivaling Bob Dylan and intricate music, complex for “folk” but with simple chord progressions that are only obvious after the fact. Most importantly, Dar understands how to connect with an audience, and as a result, has a strong community of devoted fans. I returned to visit Dar’s performances several times each year through 2002.
In those last few years, Dar Williams came to Princeton, New Jersey several times to perform at the Nassau Presbyterian Church in support of the Coalition for Peace Action and Isles, Inc. During one of these concerts, I met Dar again back stage. We’ve met a few times, and almost every time Dar has mentioned that she recognized me — even, strangely enough, the time we met after that first concert in 1996. Here’s a photograph I snapped with my first digital camera in 2000.
Now, more about last night’s interesting performance.
Pink Floyd will never die, even if Roger “Syd” Barrett and Rick Wright have already left this planet. The Pink Floyd musical business entity, which I imagine still has David Gilmour making the decisions, has agreed to partner with with music company, EMI, for another five years. Yes, EMI describes itself as a “music company,” which seems to encompass production, but in Pink Floyd’s case, all that’s left may well be distribution. The four continuing members of Pink Floyd since Syd left assembled and performed together for the last time for Live 8, which amazingly is now five years in the past.
If EMI believes there is still money to be made on the Pink Floyd brand, let’s hope it will be with something fresh. There will be no new Pink Floyd music, even if David Gilmour does manage to spit out a new album. EMI will probably take the safe route and simply remaster the released albums yet again and package a new “best of” compilation. Another Dark Side of the Moon release, or perhaps Blu-ray remasters of already-released concert videos, would be welcome and commercially successful. What I — and possibly many fans — would like to see is the release of high quality recordings of some of Pink Floyd’s more interesting works.
Tuesday night, Amy and I had the pleasure of seeing Ben Folds at the Beacon Theatre in New York City. The night’s entertainment began with an opening set featuring a band new to me, Lady Danville. Though they play instruments, the band was formed out of an a cappella tradition in Los Angeles in 2007 and has been touring with Ben recently.
Not only do they play your standard rock instruments like piano, guitar, and drums, but they rock the glock and uke as well. After the jump, I’ve shared videos of their songs I Want You Back (featuring Ben Folds and the ukelele) and Bed 42 (featuring the glockenspiel). At the concert, I was struck by the band’s harmonies; even with only three voices, they managed to produce rich vocals. I recommend checking them out as they open for Dashboard Confessional on next year’s tour; feel free to leave the show before the main act performs.
Ben Folds is a masterful pianist. This might be news for anyone whose only exposure is his appearance as a competent judge on NBC’s singing group contest show, The Sing-Off.
For those who have never been to a Ben Folds show, there always seems to be a point when there is a lull between songs, and people start shouting song requests. What makes this different than other rock shows is that, through tradition, people often yell a request for Rock This Bitch. From what I can tell, this originated from a concert many years ago during which an audience member randomly yelled out, “Rock this, bitch!” (note the difference in inflection and meaning). Ben Folds proceeded to improvise a song based on this phrase and the song was eventually included on an official recording.
In Tuesday night’s concert, the request for Rock This Bitch was followed by the cliche drunken rock request of Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd. Although he claims to not know the song, he pounded it out on the keys, incorporating the first requested song, in a clever improvisation.
The last time I saw Ben Folds live was several years ago, and I don’t remember if he had his synth keyboard at the time. There were three of these red keyboards on stage, and they produced some amazing sounds. Searching the internet, I was able to find a photograph of the set-up that had enough detail to make out what it is. Along with his piano, Ben plays a Nord Lead 2 keyboard, although the branding has been somehow modified to appropriately read “Nerd Lead” instead of “Nord Lead.” I have found the next musical object of my desire.
His latest record, Lonely Avenue, featuring lyrics by author Nick Hornby (Juliet, Naked, About a Boy, Fever Pitch, High Fidelity) is really growing on me.
One annoying aspect of the concert was the security. There was no announcement regarding flash photography or video recording, but concert-goers should assume that this wouldn’t be allowed. Since we were in the fourth row of the orchestra seating area and on the aisle, we were close to the security guard who was sitting at the lip of the stage in the aisle, facing the audience. Every three minutes he stood up to reprimand one of the same four people in the immediate vicinity who were recording videos with compact digital cameras.
Of course, without stealth concert recorders, those willing to put their lives at risk through copyright infringement for the sake of sharing music, I wouldn’t be able to share the videos below.
Keep reading for some videos.
Musician Ben Folds, one third of the former trio Ben Folds Five (and medium format photographer), must be BFFs with William Shatner. The former captain of the Enterprise teamed up with Ben for the musician’s side project, Fear of Pop. Shatner has a distinctive style of singing that most people would not call “singing.”
Some time after this first collaboration, William became the spokesperson for Priceline. In one commercial, he played against an evil William Shatner, with the requisite goatee, reminiscent of the archetypal evil twin Spock in the classic Star Trek episode, “Mirror, Mirror.” But more importantly, one commercial featured Shatner “singing” with piano accompaniment. The piano was manned by Ben, practically unidentifiable in comparison with the legendary Shatner. The first time I saw the commercial, I was unaware of the actor’s relationship with Ben Folds and the combination struck me by surprise.
William Shatner is now continuing his domination of television with a show I expected to be horrible: “Shit My Dad Says,” the show spelled, “$#*! My Dad Says,” and pronounced, “Bleep My Dad Says.” How good could a television show based on a Twitter feed really be? Well, it’s not so bad. In fact, a recent episode featured a good criticism of self-help gurus — people for which I, like the writers of this episode, have little respect.
The best part of the show is that the theme music and all of the interstitial music is performed by Ben Folds. Check out the short opening credit sequence after the jump. The full song, “Your Dogs,” is on Ben’s latest album and collaboration with author Nick Hornby, Lonely Avenue.
Earlier this year, my first attempts at concert photography produced a lot of garbage. City Streets Cafe in East Windsor (New Jersey) is a bar and restaurant that has become the home for Bryan Douglas’s band, TheGoodLife. The band performs covers of today’s hot hip hop and pop music. I suggest seeing the band this coming Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, at City Streets in celebration of their first anniversary. I’m going to try to make the show, but I’ll be flying back from Los Angeles earlier that day and may not make it in time.
Getting quality photographs is a struggle at this venue. Like most bars, it’s dark, and with the band’s colorful and hyperactive lighting set-up, you never know what color you’re going to get. In the future, I’ll need to look out for stray spotlights.
Particularly with this shoot, it’s evident that the photographer’s job is not done once the memory card is full and the lens cap is placed back on the lens. My first attempts at post-processing shots from City Streets did not result in normal-looking final products. You can see some of the earlier attempts in the Flickr set linked below.
My post-processing skills have continued to improve though I’m still working on developing (get it?) the best methods.
View some of the selected photographs after the jump.
For the full set — not the full full set, because that would be about 1,200 photographs over three nights — take a look at the best 81 shots in this set on Flickr.
This is the latest in a series about good music in commercials, if two posts does, in fact, constitute a series. This is Beck, known worldwide for his memorable guest star stint in an episode of Futurama ten years ago. Also, his albums with groovy beats are quite good. Even Sea Change had a number of excellent tracks.
The music in this ad is from the song “Black Tambourine” on Guero. Listen to the music after the jump.