Day 10: Interstate Tour 2018
The Illinois & Michigan Canal towpath in Morris, Illinois.
The rain began early and then, like a Gen Z hipster, it ghosted and left sweet, delicious sunlight and a traveling patchwork of soot-hued clouds to stream over opening day of the Gebhard Woods Dulcimer and Traditional Music Festival.
Besides my noon workshop on Irish Flatpicking Tunes and a 4 pm performance, I shot Dulcimerica footage, visited with folks that I hadn't seen in a while and went back to the I&M Canal trail to get some drone shots of a cool bridge that caught my eye yesterday.
Mixed in with all of the above were frequent visits to Imua, where I continued to parse, transfer and organize media files and other data related to Dulcimerica. Trying to get it all squared so that I can pass it off and not worry about it. Wouldn't it be cool to lay down some tracks this week as opposed to formatting episode sequences? Who's all for the former?
Anyway, it was a fun day full of beautiful and fun little moments. Singing to Sarah Morgan during my set was one (Yes, Starship.)
The other was seeing Cathy Barton and Dave Para preparing for their set in the middle of the meadow. They are absolutely two of my favorite people in the world and for so many reasons. Side by side, they're two of the most incredible pickers anywhere and they're just fun, positive, good people. Their music is full of a magic energy and it always makes me smile.
Sundown brought a little hang time in our temporary RV site at Goold Park that included a demonstration of the Mavic Pro. David Lindsey wants to get a drone for shots of his festival, The Winter Creek Reunion in Bennington, Oklahoma, so I gave him a tour of the controls and capabilities. I think we'll be seeing some nice aerial shots from this year's event, one way or another.
We see the world from a ground-level perspective most of the time. If we travel a lot, then we get to see more than our fair share of high altitude views of the planet below. It's that place between 50 and 400 feet that's really fascinating because, unless you're in a building or on the side of a mountain, that's not a perspective that we see a whole lot. That's why our faces are always glued to the windows when we're taking off and landing in an airplane.
Same towpath and bridge; different perspective.
That view. How the houses look small, but still large, in a different way. Mass seems to feel different, your bigger picture lights up and it's close enough to comprehend but still far enough away to sort of blow your mind. This is where drone photography excels, by ridding the need of dollies, cranes and helicopters that have traditionally covered this 50' - 400' range since images first began being committed to photo paper.
Perspectives in art are a lot like perspectives in life. Something becomes more interesting when you see it from a number of different angles, amirite?