An organised event in which I have this year volunteered to photograph. A combination of Musicians, dancers, magicians and general entertainment of all different sorts displayed on the central street of Morges. Running for 4 days and 6pm till 11pm each night this week it presents various challenges to photograph. The question is how do you get something different without the rubbish bin in the background, a sign coming from someone’s head or indeed the shop neon sign dominating the background?
These guys sounded great but the location was far from ideal outside a shop of course, behind to the left was the delivery bay and to the left a neon pharmacy sign! By going in close with a shallow depth of field, apologies the fourth member on the banjo, and then creating a monochrome background most of the distractions could be ‘hidden’ thus focusing your attention the the band and for those there their music which was great.
Trying different techniques can make for interesting images showing the motion of the artist and their instrument. This Spanish guitar player strumming the notes of flemenco often stayed in one position concentrating on the dancer as he played the enchanting music for her to dance to. So I lowered the shutter speed to blur his fingers then it was just the wait for a significant moment without his head moving. Not so easy unless you are maybe a guitar player and can predict the music.
Of course it wasn’t all music as I mentioned there were other types of entertainment including one act blowing some of the largest bubbles you can imagine. Whilst this one doesn’t show the size it reflects on the Main Street of Morges the rainbow colours swirling in what appears in the reflection as the Morges skyline.
If you want to see the size of some then just look at the image below as the light breeze fills the bubble which is still expanding. Some of these stretched to 5m in length!
For pure high energy and engagement with the crowd though you need look no further than Galiro! This ‘One Man Band’ was engaging and entertaining playing well known music interacting with the crowd and even producing instrument for them to take part in his show. Loved it!
Now to this image, I am not sure if it works or not. It’s something I have been trying, to show the motion in the music however getting the musician in focus without too much blurring of the face is tricky. So before you ask this was not done in photoshop or some other editing software. It is straight out of camera as far as the composition is concerned. It’s 4 frames stacked in camera. This method presents 2 opportunities for movement, the artist which you cannot control and the photographer the second can be controlled but it takes practice. Think I need some more practice yet.
If you want to see more images then click the link below and leave a comment.
What a wonderful report of this BuskersAMorges festival ! You’ve made my year ❤️🙏🙏🙏 thanks a lot the pictures are just amazing