By the time most of you see this, Super Bowl XLVI will be over, which is why -- even though I'm composing this post before the game begins -- I'm calling this a "reflection."
One thought before plodding onward: If you're a professional photographer or photography enthusiast who lives in the Indianapolis area, and you decided to pass on photographing any of the Super Bowl activity -- even the free walk through the village -- you missed out big time.
I visited the village four times, and I can easily attest that the first three -- twice on the opening day (afternoon and night of Friday, Jan. 27) and the night of Monday, Jan. 30 -- were worth my while. At that point, it was still a community for the local residents to enjoy and appreciate, and that's when Indy folks had their best chance to experience it the way it was meant to be experienced. One could walk around relatively easily, and there was a bounty of wonderful, innovative picture options and opportunities.
On visit No. 4, about 2:30 p.m. Feb. 3 when Morris Day & the Time played the Verizon Stage in the village, the expected out-of-town swarm of people had overwhelmed the village and packed the spectator area around the stage. Even my 70-200mm lens wasn't long enough to get a semi-respectable shot. I turned around and left almost as quickly as I had hurried down there. I gave fleeting thought to trying to come back at night just to walk Georgia Street back and forth a few times -- not even to do much photography, except maybe an occasional shot of anything I could grab with my G12 -- but the still-vivid memory of the afternoon experience swayed me not to.
Some might call "reflection" a fancy word for "leftovers," and I won't quibble too much. True, the point of this post is to include some more images from my visits to the Super Bowl Village that I didn't include in previous posts in the past 10 days. But I did have so many photographs, and to relegate the majority of them as meaningless compared to those I did upload to the blog strikes me as wrong.
So, however you want to treat these next few posts, I know I'm going about in as constructive manner as possible. I decided to leave my swan-song nod to Indianapolis as host of Super Bowl XLVI in three installments -- people (mostly candids, or what some would call "street photography"); the live bands I was fortunate to photograph at the free shows at the two stages in the Super Bowl Village in Downtown Indy; and Downtown icons -- buildings I stopped to photograph along the way, some for the first time, others dressed up in or juxtaposed with Super Bowl dressage.
This first post is dedicated to the people I captured in my candids. In traditional "street photography" fashion, I present these in monochrome conversions. A lot of the opportunities for these shots came at the periodic warming stations along the Georgia Street mall. The installation warmers (see second and sixth photos below) made for some interesting shots themselves; the overhead lamp warmers cast a whole different, warming glow on the people, as illustrated in my favorite candid -- the man with the fedora in the leadoff image in
the post of Jan. 31. Two other favorites -- the silhouetted individual making a phone call and the people taking snapshots of the fireworks lighting up the sky -- also are in that post.
I think under ordinary circumstances, I would have approached many of these people to explain what I was doing and ask their permission. But, the so many people, and since I have no intention on making any money off these shots, I grabbed what I could, and moved on.
Here are some others ...
