Kick out the jazz, mothertruckers!

Jazz Fest week here in Rochester is a bunch of Fridays in a row where I can get out work, pregame a gin and tonic, listen to a little Coltrane, then make a trek a block down the road to enjoy some jazz and candid photography. I’m there for the free jazz, sponsored by all of our local corporate besties, and people watching. In an act of juvenile and music disobedience, I walked through the crowd wearing the MC5 shirt that may you get banned from Sunday Pasta at Nana’s.

One thing you will not find here is me regurgitating the typical photographic dogma that at one point in all our lives, or all for some of you, spit out like fools. That’s all boring “fun” but I’m here for the feeling, man. If you want to know more about energy and feeling while photographing (and then editing afterwards, buy me a beer. I’m too old for that other stuff. And I just do not care about that pragmatic stuff anymore. Why else is there is to make music or photographs? It’s certainly not to put on social media to achieve some sort of local fame and ruin the environment at the same time. While it may be ecologically better to have a personal website that very few people read (just like on Instagram!) in terms of the carbon footprint alone (see also: personal health, scams, misinformation, privacy concerns, etc.), everything we seemingly do makes the planet age faster. Anyways, I was feeling the energies from the lady in orange above and the dapper fellas below.

I’m big on public displays of affection as a subject. I have a whole collection of them at festivals, set aside for a zine, or something. Hugging, kissing, dapping, high fives. If live, outside jazz doesn’t make you do that, who are you then? I hate it when I look down a line of chairs and do not see one foot bouncing in agreement to the music.

All in all, I spent most of my first couple days wandering jazz fest, leaning casually to the side with a hand on my waist, watching people react to the music and the people around them.

Eventually, I realize that it actually isn’t Friday and I have to work tomorrow morning. So I walk home, disappointed tomorrow is not Saturday, wishing I couldn’t get it out of my head the carbon footprint of being online, to download my photos and lick my wounds for missing a photo. How I could I not have just held my ground amongst a moving jazz crowd and made the ATM banners stick out of her head like ears?

These photos will not happen again. That’s why I like taking them and seeing what happens.