A sea of people near the ocean. Asbury Park. View from Sea-Hear-Now Festival photographer Ismael Quintanilla III. September 2024 Asbury Park. Click to enlarge.
Concert shot by Ismael Quintanilla III. Extraordinary.
Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor Blogfinger.net. Original post on Blogfinger was 2024. Today is 9/13/25.
I love this top photo of the Sea-Hear-Now Festival by a specialist image maker whose specialty is documenting music concerts all over the country, and his imaginative works are extraordinary if you Google him. Click to enlarge.
I think of him trying to find a point of view among an ocean of photographers who were at the event. And although they all were shooting the same spectacle, his result has to be among the best.
Ismael decided on a distant landscape image obtained at night. It looks like he is at the oceanfront facing the 30,000 concert-goers on the beach. Is this a drone image? Or is he on a boat or maybe in a low flying airplane or maybe a copter? However it doesn’t matter; the final image is what matters.
Two years ago I spoke to someone who thought that he could hear the music for free aboard a boat. But he said that the quality of the sound was poor.
Yet here we have a fine nocturnal image, using whatever light was available. You couldn’t use a camera with flash. He probably has a high tech camera with an extraordinarily sensitive sensor like I have for black and white–you have seen my recent monochrome photos.
So Ismael borrowed this spectacular view to obtain this wonderful image. And he can he take full credit for his marvelous photograph although he took no part in designing the scene.. He can still put that image into his next book of concert images.
In photography the basic raw materials are light, camera, composition, and creativity on top of the subject matter. And there are other technical components as well. There was a time, over 100 years ago when photographs were not considered to be art whereas painting was. That was a biased conversation long ago left in the dust of the Victorian art world.
I like to think of photographers who specialize in obtaining gorgeous images of ballets. These artists create beautiful photos while being in a theater and aiming at the stage. So if he obtains an amazing shot of a ballerina dramatically lit, and he has no roll in creating that scene or the lighting, he can still autograph his book of ballet photos or a print hanging on someone’s wall.
If he is shown on Blogfinger, we would add music to the creation which is what is actually happening during a performance of Swan Lake.
If I take a photo of a band at the Festival performing during a concert I don’t need their permission to take the photo and make it mine. I could sell the print.
A Festival band is in a public space at the beach, so my photo could viewer the chance to think of a story to go with it. It is an imagination magnet.
It reminds me of a few years ago when I, wearing my New Jersey press pass, was not allowed to step onto the Asbury beach to take a few shots at the Festival. Yet some photographers were allowed in, but the sponsors limited their numbers according to the date when the press handed in an application.
The Asbury boards and beach are public spaces, so I think that their locking me out is depriving me of freedom for the press and even for anyone else who wants to wander over there. If they don’t like having the public walk there, then this festival should be held elsewhere on private property such as the Monmouth Fair or Woodstock.
It reminds me a bit of allowing the Flea Markets to set up on the Pathway, depriving those who live there and the rest of OG residents to enjoy public spaces in our town without oppression by thousands of tourists who come there to engage in commercial activity.
Coldplay: