I had the pleasure of going to Coachella for the first time this past weekend with a phenomenal group of people and like most who went, had an experience to remember. Also like most, I took pictures and videos of my favorite things and ended up with a sizable library of photos and videos that ate up all of the memory on my phone.
Post festival and on the flight back to DC I decided to take a break from reading 'One More Thing' by 'The Office' funny man B.J. Novak (highly recommended) and took a minute to admire the interesting subjects that I had captured on my phone. As I whittled them down one by one to a smaller compilation of the best shots, I was struck by something that I felt compelled to share.
Turns out that my favorite pictures of the Coachella experience weren't those that I expected. While I was predictably impressed by and captured some amazing shots of the scores of music acts the likes of Tycho, Stromae, Florence and the Machine, and art installations (Butterflies! Giant lamps! Hippo Corporate Headquarters!), my favorite pictures of the festival were the ones of things that didn't deliberately fight for my attention... Things as mundane and 'blah' like the sky, parking lot fences and incoming traffic had made for what in my mind are some really beautiful photographs. (look below and see if you agree)
The lesson? Anything, captured under the right light and at the right time, can be stunningly beautiful. You just have to know how and when to look. Talk about a life metaphor.
What do you think?
Namasme.