There’s more going on here than meets the eye. Below this statue on the plinth is found a plaque reading, “Non Plaudite, Modo Pecuniam Jacite,” which translates from Latin as, “Do not applaud, just throw money,” perhaps a comment on the assumption of the art world into that of commerce so nearby?
I discovered this piece changes in response to the viewer at Atlas Obscura (although I did not witness any change myself).
Our week in Edinburgh coincided with the Edinburgh Jazz & Blues Festival and we were lucky enough to get great seats for the Norwegian Mona Krogstad Quartet at the Jazz Bar on the evening of July 19th (over a month ago, now!) to hear this excellent ensemble. A great time and rather than describe the music subjectively and inaccurately, I can recommend you listen to them. Click any of the pictures below to see them all bigger (you may have to click the post title first if you’re not seeing this directly on the web site already).
For those interested in technical details, these were difficult shooting conditions as it was dark and I was just shooting with my walk-around zoom lens from my seat so as not to disturb those around me. Needless to say, they were shot at a very high ISO and were reasonably noisy as well as sometimes not that sharp at low shutter speeds. I used DxO’s Pure Raw to recover as much quality from the raw files as possible before processing in Capture One, simply using the default settings.
The same Rock Choir we say marching in the parade the day before (and the same one we saw at the Museum of Rural Life a month or 2 ago) performed as part of the carnival on Sunday. Here they are covering Dolly Parton’s Jolene.
This week was a great one musically although no cameras were allowed in either event. We spent a couple of days in London. On Wednesday evening we were at the Hammersmith Apollo for Shakti’s final London appearance. They gave a rousing performance that brought the audience to its feet after nearly every number (a tiny taste below – if viewing this in email click the post title to go to the browser and see the clip). And to make things even better, the show opened with a performance by Gary Husband and Nguyen Le.
Then, Thursday I was fortunate to be included in a group of English photography students invited to a discussion in a small theatre at the recently re-opened National Portrait Gallery between Stanley Tucci and Paul McCartney about the just opened exhibit of Paul’s pictures from 1964 (you can pay to view a recording of the live-streamed event here until July 6th). Here the secrecy was even greater and we were made to turn off our phones and seal them in envelopes before being granted entry. Tucci conducted an excellent discussion and McCartney was his usual charming, entertaining self. Interestingly, the discussion centered far more on photography and the Beatles’ experience on their triumphant initial US tour than I had dared hope. Below a shot from his Instagram. Two tremendous experiences.
We had chanced upon Plymouth’s Pirate weekend! If viewing in email, click the post title to click into the images and see them larger.
They were being video-graphed by the woman you can see ton the bottom left corner of the top left photo as they performed their synchronized routine. They had gathered a crowd of watchers but I couldn’t find any other information about them. Click any image to see them all full sized.
A somewhat stilted performance
Last month I went to see the Women’s Resistance Revival Chorus, that grew out of January’s Women’s March, at City Winery with family and good friends and have finally gotten around to working on a few snaps from the evening. You can read all about it here. And you can see the images full-sized by clicking on any one of them.
