Hi guys, Just want to send a message and share a moment of pure joy with you. I'm in the middle, or rather the end of a rather hectic work writing and delivering photos for a "Programme paper" for an upcoming jazz festival in The Aland Islands. I know jazz (I used to be a jazz (rock, latin) musician), I am a trained journalist/reporter, and jazz music has been one of my main photo genres, why the festival wisely thought I'd be the perfect editor for the festival paper. Apart from introducing the artists and bands, gathering information etc. I also get the opportunity to publish a lot of my photos. (By the way, the festival will also be running my exhibition "Face of jazz" that I put up last winter at another local jazz festival.) Anyway, I have also had to pick out photos of musicians, where the original shots really weren't that good from various points of view. However some Photoshop work, cropping, applying color corrections (boy do I love that curves tool!) etc has produced a lot of at least fairly good shots that you'd think weren't there from the beginning. (Let's just hope that they will turn out okay in the finished print). Late for the first deadline, but still not altogether too late, I am right now in the process of tying up the bag, so to speak, and start delivering the files to the printing house. There is still a handful of pictures I have to find/pick out though and make good versions of for printing. This work has meant that I sometimes have checked my picture archives quite few years back. What pleasure there is in scanning some of your long forgotten, crappily printed shots and see them show up in beautiful appearance on your screen. Now, what specifically caused me to send you this message was this shot of this young lady singer, who more or less became my (mostly live performing) model for many years. It's not perfectly exposed, she appears in a shoulder shot, dressed in black against a black background, the flash is directly towards her face. But what a beautiful pose! Turning slightly to her left, just listening to the band, the microphone in her hand, her hair tied up which makes her facial features come to the fore, her eyes and her mouth and her beautiful upright neck - it's a classic of something I will yet have to find a name for. I was just going to do a quick touch at this shot, but it started growing on me and I found myself doing all kind of variations of it, including B&W:s. It's like a song - if it's a good one, you find it will lend itself to many different variations/styles and still preserve it's quality. This lady happens also to be a dear friend or aquaintance to me, but whom I haven't seen for some time. She will appear at the festival though and I'm going to ask her if I can do a separate shoot with her, if her time will allow it. It's such a great picture, and it's all mine.... (do be do be dooo...)! Well, isn't it fun to hear about such photographic joy.
Lasse
