Seeing Yo-Yo Ma In Person

Yesterday I was lucky enough to be one of the people in Purdue’s Elliot Hall of Music to see Yo-Yo Ma. His music has fueled my photography for years so it was kind of neat to see him perform and photograph him in person. For most of the show I left my camera in my backpack so that I could enjoy the show. I sat in my seat and just listened. At the end though when everyone stood up for the last song I ran down the aisle to make a couple of quick photos of the final song. I knew that after the song was over I would probably get some of the goodbyes as well. It all culminated with the photo that you see above. I think that it captures the energy and fun that we had for the hour and a half with this legend.

Taking In Other Forms Of Art

Yo-Yo Ma had a lot of great things to say during his time on stage. One of the things that I took away was how he takes in other forms of art and life to influence his music. This past year I have tried to do the same with my photography. I was in a sports bubble just taking that content in all of the time. I have tried to take in as much as I could so that maybe that could inform me in a different way and make my photos a little different. It is always fun to have an idea, but when you hear someone like Yo-Yo Ma say something similar it seems to validate the idea.

Process

I am really into process. I don’t think of myself as a great artist so I need a process to get there. During his talk Yo-Yo Ma talked about his process for playing the cello. He talked about how much of it is technical. There are the things that you need to do to make sound. He then talked about how the art portion of what he does is how he does those things. I think that photography can be very similar. The process of making a picture can be very technical. There is so much that goes into a photo from a settings and setup point of view. When you start to become a good photographer is when you can do those things without thinking about them so you can spend your time thinking about how to make the photo better.

More Photos

It was really cool to get to see and listen to Yo-Yo Ma in person. Going into the day I had no idea what to expect. It was billed as a talk so I was hoping to just hear a couple of seconds of him playing. We were treated to a few songs along with a couple of them that he did a couple of ways to show his process. It was far more than I could have hoped for. Below are a couple of bonus photos from the day.