A pictorial toast to street performers

There's a funny story (OK, perhaps only slightly funny) to the genesis of today's post. I'll try to make it brief. 

While working at my online site at SmugMug.com, I was organizing a gallery involving street performers I'd photographed in the past. It had not occurred to me until doing this work on the gallery that I photographed a flute player in Savannah twice -- and four years apart. And each time, he was performing on the riverwalk along River Street. 

The first time was on Feb. 1, 2018 (see photo leading off the post). He was wearing a red, black, gray and white checkered long-sleeve shirt, light blue jeans and a small fedora with a feather on top. I'm sure I came across him while doing a walk-around the riverwalk area that day.

The next time was on March 30, 2022 (see photo above), and I spied him not far from where the Savannah River cruise ship, The Georgia Queen, was docking after Lee Ann and I had been on a leisurely trip along the river close to where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. We were still on the cruiser when I took this photo. This time, the musician was wearing a white shirt, gray pants and a ship captain's hat. 

Interestingly, each time I photographed him, I happened to catch him looking my way at least once in my pictures. (see first two photos below). Nevertheless, it did not occur to me in 2022 that I had seen this guy on the 2018 visit. That lightning bolt struck Tuesday of this week as I was organizing the aforementioned street performers photo gallery, a link to which you'll find in this sentence. 

I figured that while relating this story, I'd go ahead an offer some more photos from the street performances gallery here. So below are some other shots. Most, I might add, were taken in Savannah, where there are quite a few such performers at various spots along the riverwalk. 

The fellow above and below I remember only by his first name, Mike, even though he told me his full name at the time I took these photos in October 2011. I even did a post about him ... in 2013, two years after the fact! I encountered him while doing a photo shoot along Mass Ave in Indianapolis. As the 2013 post mentions, Mike told me at the time he was leaving for Europe the next day. I've always wondered what became of him ... 

   

We're back in Savannah for the next few performers. I did not catch any of their names, unfortunately. But the guys in the photo above, below and second and third photos below all were stationed at some point along the riverwalk. I came upon the guy above on March 7, 2017, which coincided with my first-ever visit to Savannah. The next two performers, very animated in their a cappella delivery, were photographed Feb. 1, 2018, the same day I first photographed the flute player in the lead-off photo. 

The horn player above and below I came across in Savannah's Forsyth Square, the largest (by far) of the city’s almost two dozen neighborhood one-block parks, or squares. The photo date was Dec. 14, 2017. On that same date, in one of the smaller neighborhood squares, I came across a saxophone player dressed as Santa entertaining a young boy and his mother (second and third photos below). 

Above: This performer I came across in Savannah on the far western end of the riverwalk on April 1, 2022. 

Above and below: We briefly leave music in order to transition to painting with this guy, who is bundled up on a cold autumn day, Nov. 16, 2018, to be exact. He was demonstrating his craft in one of one-block neighborhood squares in Savannah. The bottom photo is a cropped version of the one above.

Above and below: Still in Savannah for these shots, again in Forsyth Square, but on March 29, 2022. 

Above and below: The last performer in this post was another sax player, this time on the pier at Waterfront Park in Charleston, S.C. I came across him on March 10, 2017. We stopped in Charleston after leaving Savannah that month before returning to North Carolina.  

A salute to Hershel Saylor, the photo club colleague with the 3D camera

In the early part of the 2010s, I was an active member of two photography clubs in Indianapolis. On Saturday, while perusing some pictures of mine from that era, I happened to think of a particular fellow who was a member of one of the clubs, the Indy Meetup Photo Club. So I went online to see if I could find a way to contact him just to see how he was doing.

In my search for that one piece of information, I was saddened to learn something entirely different about Hershel Saylor: He had passed away in 2020, almost five years to the day. 

Hershel was someone from the club who stuck with me through the years because of a photographic innovation of his — and I think he told me he concocted it himself — which was to shoot three dimensional photos. The tool, or camera, he used to do this was actually two cameras connected side by side. Every composition he made appeared on each camera’s LCD screen, side by side (see photo leading off the post).  

I don't recall studying his results back then to know or appreciate whether the 3D objective really worked or succeeded, but I remember him trying to explain to me how it was supposed to work, and how that explanation went over my head. 

Hershel was a tech geek of sorts, so I guess his tech-speak didn’t land anywhere close to the comprehension center of my brain. It probably wasn’t his fault; it was just the feeble nature of my ability to absorb geek talk in an understanding way. 

In 2015, a year or so after I had left the clubs, I dropped Hershel an email when I saw a couple of athletes with the surname Saylor at Indianapolis Roncalli High School being mentioned a lot in the sports section of the local newspaper. I asked him if he was related to either of them by chance. 

After kindly mentioning how it was good to hear from me and that he and his wife, Deb, who also was a member of the IMUPC, have spoken of me “quite a few times since the camera club,” he confirmed that the two Saylor athletes I had been reading about were children of a nephew of his. 

He then told me that he’d been doing some work for WHMB TV (Channel 40 in Indianapolis) for the station’s Friday sports broadcast. 

I found his obituary online and enjoyed a wonderful pictorial tribute that his family had arranged to display on the page. It included a few photos of Hershel holding his 3D camera, two more of which I'll provide immediately below. All three photos are from the pictorial tribute, incidentally.

After viewing the tribute, I went into my photo archives to see if I had any photos of Hershel from our days together in the photo club, and it turns out, I did. I’ll present them below, although none of them shows him using his special camera. 

It occurred to me while composing this post that the club never devoted a meeting (at least none that I had attended) for Hershel to introduce and demonstrate his 3D camera operation. It certainly would have been worth considering doing so, given that the club welcomed all topics related to the craft for its meetings.

Above, Hershel and fellow IMUPC member Bill Riggs peruse some of the images our club was putting up for sale at the 2011 rendition of the annual Christmas Market hosted by the Joy of All Who Sorrow Church at 16th and Delaware streets in Indianapolis. The photo below was taken at another point that evening at the Market. 

Six days after that event, the IMUPC had its annual club Christmas get-together, which is when I took photo above. The same month as the above Christmas Market and our club Christmas get-together, club members had a night outing in Zionsville to shoot holiday decorations, and that's where I shot the first photo below.

On June 16, 2012, Hershel and wife Deb joined club members in relaxing and enjoying refreshments after a full day of shooting the second then-annual Hendricks County Park2Park running race in which teams of six took turns running splits of a 60+ mile course starting at a county park at one end of the county and finishing in a county park at the other end. Below, in another photo from the obituary page photo tribute, Hershel enjoys the camaraderie of a fellow club member, Fred (his surname escapes me now), during the Park2Park shoot. 

CHAPTER 18Community property tax protest, 2007

 

To conclude the series, I returned to yet another assignment from that instructor of the advanced photography class I took through IUPUI in Indianapolis.

Class members were asked to shoot a news event, so I decided to go to downtown Indianapolis on July 15, 2007, for a planned community protest rally against what many property owners perceived as inordinately steep recent property reassessments on top of a recently approved tax increase on those properties in Marion County.

I landed at the iconic Monument Circle, where Meridian and Market streets meet in the center of downtown.   

The protest was well organized and advertised. Many of the people who showed up carried sundry signs bearing quips and daggers harpooning elected officials responsible for the swell of opposition. But many protestors also showed up wearing black -- either black shirts/tops and/or both shirts and pants/slacks. 

One protestor wore a black robe and had a skull mask covering his/her face (see first  photo below). 

It is believed that people's incensed reaction to the property reassessments and tax increases that year propelled Indianapolis businessman and retired Marine Lt. Col. Greg Ballard to run for mayor of Indianapolis that fall. He won in what was considered a major upset of incumbent Mayor Bart Peterson. The margin of victory was 51% to 47%. Ballard won re-election in 2011.

That's Ballard (in all black) speaking to the tax protestors at Monument Circle in the lead-off photo and in the first photo below.  

Ballard was the only Republican to file for mayor in 2007, which was remarkable considering Republicans had the tax issue to wield in their favor. But most people presumed Democrat Peterson was a lock to win a third consecutive term. 

But it was Republicans who wrote and enacted legislation consolidating county and city governance, called UniGov, in Marion County in 1970. And it was Republicans who had dominated elections to offices operating that government from that point until Peterson first won in 1999 and was re-elected in 2003. Peterson was Indianapolis' first Democrat elected mayor since 1967.

I arrived in Indianapolis in 1978, and all I'd ever known while living there were Republican mayors ... until Peterson came along.

On July 15, 2007, I had a field day doing my photo documentation of the rally. So many signs to zero in on, and I present the bulk of them below. 

At one point, I decided to ask the people at the main desk of the 10-story Columbia Club, which is a private social club on the northeast quadrant of the Circle, if I could use one of their upper-level floors to get aerial perspectives of protestors on the Monument steps. They consented and steered me to the 10th floor, 25,000-square-foot ballroom, and that's where I was when taking the overhead pictures you see below.    

End of series

Previously in Catching Up ... on pre-blog years:

Introduction

Chapter 1: Seek the Riot metal band

Chapter 2: City of Franklin, Ind.

Chapter 3: 2004 Memorial Day weekend tornado 

Chapter 4: 2006 Irvington Walk in the Park

Chapter 5: 2008 Irvington Walk in the Park

Chapter 6: Irvington Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 7: Lockerbie Square Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 8: Garfield Park-South Neighborhood, Indianapolis

Chapter 9: Tulips from home garden

Chapter 10: Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library and Downtown architecture

Chapter 11: First shoot using RAW format

Chapter 12: 2007 Miracle Mile Parade, Indianapolis

Chapter 13: 2008 Miracle Mile Parade, Indianapolis

Chapter 14: 2010 neighborhood yuletide lights, decorations

Chapter 15: Forking out over a class assignment

Chapter 16: More fun with still-life photography

Chapter 17: Depew Memorial Fountain, University Park, Indianapolis