Getting out of the Mob

With this weeks theme I thought I had the perfect shots already planed in my head.  The idea of a mob and it's vast pieces working and clamoring for the same shared desire seemed to bring one image to my mind.  The MUSS (Mighty Utah Student Section) at a University football game. 

I have been member of this rowdy and ruckus group for since 2008.  When the students chant, sing, jump and scream together defines a mob to me. I wanted to try and capture what that was and how it felt.  The task was a little harder than I anticipated.  Not because of the cold and the lights and the angles I had to work around. The actual mob itself was hard to pull away from. 

When I am photographing any event I need to separate myself for the proceedings, to become more of an ignored piece of decoration that moves from one place to another.  I could not separate myself for the mob of the MUSS.  

Singing while the band plays Metallica, chocolate milk to those who know it, or Utah Man fight song . Putting up your hands and doing the U of U Chop.  Jumping and screaming at the top of your lungs during a defensive 3rd down. Even jumping on my visible horse and riding during a specific western song. The atmosphere is intoxicating and pulls me in every time.

So my image is more about not being able to distance yourself from a mob.  Like Al Pachino said "Just When I thought I was out they pull me back in."

UnSeen Beauty

With a vague starting point as beauty starting my weekly photo shoot was difficult.  I started to run the most used cliche though my head. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  To add onto that I had to capture visually the "unseen".  

I came to an idea that the unseen is something that we pass over and ignore in our day to day rushed lives.  The patterns and shapes that make our life beautiful.  Now I know that to some a stairwell might not be the prettiest thing in the world. But in this image that is not what I see.  The repetition of the rails and the stark contrast from the support beams with the negative light coming through is what is beautiful to me.