Introducing: The Joy of Making Music

January 28, 2014
Paul Schatzkin
Digest, JOYMM, photography
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Live Performance Photography for Nashville

Pru Clearwater

Pru Clearwater

Today I’m hanging a “virtual shingle” for one facet of my photography business. Find it on the web at

TheJoyOfMakingMusic.com.

Ever since the Internet started tearing up the the music business in the waning days of the 20th century, we’ve been hearing that music is now about the live performance more than the recording. Musicians used to tour to sell records; Now they give away downloads to attract an audience for their tours, then sell CDs and merch at the shows.

With live performance becoming the focus of the business, it is essential for touring musicians to have high quality photographs that convey the essence of their shows and the experience they offer their current and future fans.

I’ve been an a avid photographer all my life, and in the past few years I’ve shot a lot of shows around Nashville. I’ve nailed down some techniques for “getting the shot” even in the most crowded and poorly lit of conditions.

Capturing the essence of live music is something I enjoy doing, I seem to be pretty good at it, and I want to do more of it.

So I’ve come up with the ‘Caught In The Act Pack’ — a very affordable package of my services as a club and concert photographer.

To learn more, kindly follow this link to TheJoyOfMakingMusic.com. to see a slide show of my best work over the past few years. Follow the links there for details on the deal.

Keep it in mind next time you go to a show.

Maybe I’ll see you there. I’ll be the guy with the cameras…

Omnivore’s Delight?

January 27, 2014
Paul Schatzkin
commentary, Digest
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Really? Chicken-flavoured vegetarian ham??

It’s fine with me if vegetarians don’t want to eat meat.

But why do they insist on naming their food after it?

Why don’t they just call it “Processed Plants” or “Packaged Edible Flowers” ?

Photo source unknown; found it on the Facebook. And the guy whose page it showed up on, he doesn’t know where it came from either. That’s why I try to put a © watermark on all the stuff I post there, for whatever good it does.

And You Think Photoshop Is Deceptive?

January 24, 2014
Paul Schatzkin
Digest, gizmos, photography
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Check this out:

 

I can’t tell from the YouTube page what the software is, but it’s the most impressive portrait (and video?) retouching software I’ve seen yet.

Screen Shot 2014-01-24 at 2.28.27 PMWait a second… maybe I’m the one being deceived here.

In mean, I can’t even tell for sure if this is software… maybe it’s just a music video for a band called “Boggie” and this is their song “Parfum.” Maybe the vocalist is singing to us (in a language I don’t recognize) about the evils of photo-retouching.

For once, Google wasn’t much help.

I know… I’ll go check The Onion…

If annybody else who knows the secret… post a comment, please.

– – – – – –

Update 140126: I know the answer now. Popular Photo has disclosed that the video is, indeed, a music video for a Hungarian pop singer named Boggie. So me – and the friend who sent me the link in the first place, among the the fools.

You would think that if such software actually exists, I of all people would know about it by now.

What I’ve Been Listening To Lately – 140123 Edition

January 23, 2014
Paul Schatzkin
Digest, music
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This album by Pat Metheny is perfect “whistling while you work” music:

I’ve been listening to it via Spotify because, well, that’s what I listen to mostly these days – because their library is so much larger than my own (by several orders of magnitude) and because the embed codes Spotify supplies make it easier to share what I’ve been listening to than, say, iTunes.

The fact of the matter is, I purchased this CD long and have it already burned into my iTunes Library. So the good news for Pat Metheny is that I’ve already paid for the CD, now he’s getting more cash from me to listen to the Spotify stream. Fractions of a penny, I know, but still, it’s more than he would have gotten if I was just listening via iTunes.

Oh and, yes, I know all about the new BeatsMusic service and I’m anxious to try it out, but Beats is built on the old MOG service; I was a paid MOG subscriber until about a year ago, but my free account still exists, and it’s entangled with the Beats login protocols. It recognizes my User ID – it even let me reset the password – but Beats crashes when I try to log in. Maybe I’ll have something to say about it if they ever figure out how to let me in the door.