A busy weekend

Summer in Grand County means there is something going on every weekend and it means that there are plenty of events for me to photograph for the newspaper.  And in the heart of the summer, there are usually so many events going on that I can't get to everything.

My mantra has become: "I can only be in one place at a time."

Generally I tend to pick the biggest or most significant events, and/or ones that are likely to provide the most visual possibilities.

Things started this past weekend with a swim meet on Friday at the rec center in Fraser.  This was the first meet hosted by the new local swim club at the new rec center.

I shot, what I would call, "the usual stuff," then I started to experiment with a couple shafts of light streaming in through the windows and the abstract forms of the swimmers beneath the water surface as they started their races.  While not exactly what I was looking for, this was my favorite of the experiments, I liked the texture of the water with the colors beneath the surface:

Saturday started off with a stop at the Alpine ArtAffair in Winter Park.  This annual event is one that challenges me each year to come up with something different.  It is very easy to shoot the same thing each year--the standard "easy" shot seems to be the crowd of people wandering past the various vendor's tents.  I was determined to go way beyond that.

I spent a great deal of time attempting to juxtapose shoppers with several interesting pieces of art.  At one tent was a painting of a woman gazing out and I envisioned someone looking at the painting as she was looking at them.  Another artist had some interesting metalwork incorporating some colorful stained glass that would work if I could get people looking at it.  This would be a test of my patience.

As I was standing and watching visitors pass by the painting, I saw this scene unfolding to my left and knew I had what I was looking for:

John Scott, right, discusses his photographs with a potential customer.

I would spend the rest of the afternoon at the Winter Park Jazz Festival at Hideaway Park.  As I walked in the entrance gate, I heard an announcement from the stage that this first day of the festival had sold out and people needed to be sure to make room for everyone.  I was a little surprised by this, because while the festival has always been popular, it had never filled the venue.  But as I got to where I could get a better overall view of the area I saw that indeed there were A LOT of people there.

I made my way through the crowd to the backstage area where things were much calmer and I could relax a little while waiting for the next act to take the stage.  This is another event that I have photographed almost every year since 1989, so again the challenge is to look for some new angle or hope that the performers do something visually interesting.

The first group I photographed was Craig Chaquico, currently a jazz guitarist and the former lead guitarist for Jefferson Starship.  I shot him at his two previous appearances at the Winter Park Jazz Festival when it was held at the ski area.  Both of those times he started his performance in the crowd.  I happened to bump into him backstage and asked him if he would be doing that again and he said he would.  ***Note to self: I love working in a small town!***

Next up was Brian Culbertson a phenomenal musician, who I hadn't heard of before, but quickly became impressed.  He and his band had a great sound and incredible energy.

When I saw this photo, it reminded me of the type of photos that I had seen Florida-based newspaper photographer Chip Litherland make--in fact his blog used to be titled "Red Lights and Red Eyes."  He looks for bold color and makes it the subject of the image.

Gerey Johnson, guitarist for the Brian Culbertson band

Often at this festival the crowd comes and goes depending on who they are interested in hearing, but this year it seemed as though they all stayed afternoon for each act.  The final performer of the afternoon would be Chaka Khan.  She kicked her set off with her 80s hit "I Feel For You" and that was all I needed:

Chaka Khan

goo, goo g'joob