Craig’s Blog

Each time I head to Mill Avenue to meet a friend or for pictures I often see the same people performing on the street. Pontiac is one of those people who is always on Mill Avenue each time I am there and he is always setup in front of the Bank Of America branch on the south end of Mill. What always amazed me about Pontiac is that I don’t recall hearing the same song twice. When I stopped to talk to him he mentioned he has a catalog of over 2500 songs and that he is constantly learning new music. Some of his influences are The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Elvis and James Brown. While I am no musician, he seems to be a very accomplished guitar player. Here is a photo that shows how Pontiac is setup on the street.

Pontiac is very passionate about music and talked at length about how popular music today is lacking in terms of melody and that really talented musicians are in short supply. He really believes that people are becoming “a-melodic” and that the rhythms and sampling done in today’s music are really skewing people’s sense of good music. Pontiac’s passion for music is very evident when he plays, here is the Week 4 submission for the 52 week project:

It was a pleasure talking with Pontiac, I admire his talent and passion and I am sure I will be seeing him again soon on Mill Avenue.

The challenge of my 52 week project is to keep shooting every week and for Week 3 I was a day late in taking the picture. You might ask well if you were a day late why are you not posting the picture until Friday – almost a week later? The photograph below I was really on the fence on in terms of posting it because it has an obvious flaw – the handle of Robert’s cart going through the frame into his neck. After thinking about it for a week I decided to post it – the goal is not to post 52 perfect pictures, its to meet the objective of shooting more, photographing people and getting me out of my comfort zone.

I met Robert on Mill Avenue and when I asked to take his picture he was really interested in what I was going to do with it. I told it I would post it on my blog as part of an assignment and he seemed very skeptical. I talked with him for a while about what he was doing on Mill and he mentioned that he likes to practice on Mill and is hopeful that someone will like his music enough to leave a tip. He also talked quite a bit about how people like to give him a hard time for playing a non traditional instrument and how people can be very rude with comments, etc which is very unfortunate. After talking with him during this time Robert warmed up a bit and agreed to allow me to take some pictures. I have a ton of pictures where Robert refused to look at the camera, as if he was afraid the camera would take something from him. On a couple occasions he looked up and as I moved around him I was able to take the picture below.

Hi expression and the fact that even while looking at the camera he was still partially hidden beneath his hat struck a chord with me based on my experience with Robert. I showed him the picture above on the camera’s LCD screen and while he seemed pleased he still seemed afraid that I was going to modify the picture or do something to him before posting it here – I assured him that would not be the case (outside converting the photo to B&W). Robert, I kept true to my word – you allowed me to take your picture for my project and here it is, flaw and all. While I didn’t meet my deadline I think I have a photograph that captured the essence of my time with Robert. My week 4 deadline is approaching tomorrow, I still have time to make it!