Flash mobs were the overly used term, to the point of abuse, during the early part of the year. I watched many videos of flash mobs in India over YouTube. They were painstakingly choreographed, brilliantly filmed and slickly edited. Till yesterday, I have not seen one unfolding in front of me in real time. Yesterday, I had a chance to witness this phenomenon in front of Center Pompidou on the slanting courtyard.
Where does the rehearsal take place? I have no clue. But the word spread around quickly in Paris among the South Asian community and a selected few in the other communities. This is my assumption because my friend living in the other part of city was already informed about this when I called him up. You could see a lot of South Asian facing discreetly placing themselves into positions from where the entire event could be photographed.
After watching the flash mob video of the Mumbai VT station on YouTube, none of the similar events have matched up to the excitement generated by it. Yesterday's performance was no different. The primary reason was lack of rehearsals which resulted in out-of-synch dance steps among the participants. But the level of energy was good. Even the enthusiasm displayed by the dancers was commendable.
What interested me was the activities before the actual performance. There were many photographers around, two of them were official ones. They took time to set up their gear. When they had set up their gear and the first participant took stage, I decided to use the composition with the photographer and the subject in the frame. You can see it below.
Tags: Photos
You are living life to the flashest!
ReplyDelete:) Good word play.
DeleteThese flash mobs are getting popular.
ReplyDeleteYes. :)
Deletebeautiful click,, very interesting and creative concept!!
ReplyDeletehttp://styledestino.blogspot.com
Thank you. :)
DeleteNice image as well as the composition idea. Moving a bit closer to place the camera on the top left corner as well as the left side would have helped further improve the composition.
ReplyDeleteThank you for the suggestions. I will keep these in mind next time. :)
Deleteur awful--taking the flash from the flash:) But then she is also a lady in red so you had to take her photo, huh?
ReplyDelete:) That is the fun in taking pictures. :)
DeleteI had a very cool experience yesterday in Paris. I got wind last Friday that there was going to be a flash mob in Paris on Sunday, honoring Michael Jackson. For those who aren’t familiar, a flash mob is… well… I may just link to a few to show you (you might remember I linked to the Sound of Music flash mob in Belgium a while back). Basically a lot of people, usually organized online, decide to get together at a specific location, and at a set time they all do the same thing simultaneously, then disperse. It’s a mob that occurs in a flash. Oh, and the public already at the location has no idea the mob is about to occur. The French were planning on having a few hundred people mill about famous, busy tourist centers, like the Pompidou Center, the Montorgueil district, and Trocadero (overlooking the Eiffel Tower) and then at a specific time the music from Michael Jackon’s “Beat It” would start playing on a loudspeaker. Within moments, a soul guy would start dancing to the exact choreography in Jackson’s “Beat It” video. Then, within moments, a woman would join him – then, six more people – and slowly another 150 to 200 people would join in, all dancing simultaneously to Beat It, and then – in a flash – they’d all disperse in the crowd of tourists and it would be over. The flash mob was inspired by this previous one held in Stockholm recently. The organizers urged other cities to join in. I was lucky enough to join these guys from early Sunday morning, when they were practicing, all through the day to the various flash mob sites. I made a video documenting the practice, the mob actions themselves, and then interviewed the organizers (in English). You can check out the video below, then after the jump I have more photos from the day.
ReplyDelete