Photography Challenge of 2015 - Mad March!

Nothing says madness like a full moon!

While February was all about the natural, March was about madness! March in Adelaide is amazing with so many cultural and uncultured events to attend! The Fringe means the streets are full of crazy talented people doing things that most of us clearly remember our mothers yelling at us for doing! There is dance, plays, car racing and most importantly, music! 

March for me will always be about WOMAD, at least in part because Mr Carl and I use our anniversary as an excuse to go every year! So I get to celebrate a wonderful part of my life with an indulgent long weekend of amazing music!

Late night WOMAD

Gordie MacKeeman 

But where is the madness in all of this? Well I think I'll let the pictures speak for themselves!

There's Gordie playing the fiddle on a double bass! He was part of Gordie MacKeeman and his Rhythm  Boys, who not only improvised through a "double bass" incident, but went on from WOMAD to entertain a whole pile of Victorians at the Festival of Small Halls.

Leo

Then there's Leo from Che Sudaka. Don't let that smile fool you, this guy bounced around like the energiser bunny on speed! His whole band was one madcap, energetic mosh pit!

I have no idea what this was!

Spooky trees to add to the madness!

Crazy Colour

And then there was Gruff Rhys. Out of all the performers, he was perhaps the maddest, taking us on a weird an wonderful tale about a 18th century Welsh explorer who went looking for the fabled Welsh-speaking Native American tribe, the Madogwys. Through song and theatre he captured us and took us on an almost down the rabbit hole experience through this crazy story. Yet the craziest thing of all is that it was based on truth!

Gruff

Adam Page

WOMAD is what could be called a target rich environment, yet it is by no means an easy environment to capture good photos in, especially with a point and click. It definitely encouraged me to look at things differently, to try and capture the feeling of the event, not just the performances. What was really interesting was how differently people look at things. Carl and I saw the same performances and were, generally speaking, always together, but what we captured on camera was vastly different.


Carl had a knack for capturing the mood of the performance and some of his black and white shots were truly magical. His photo of Adam Page playing saxophone conjurers up memories of soulful music under the night sky.

Fanfare Ciocarlia

His photo of Fanfare Ciocarlia grabs the whole WOMAD experience, the big WOMADelaide banner hanging behind a group that could make an even bigger sound!

But I think his most magical photo was from the Sinead O'Connor set. We were standing behind hundreds of people, barely able to see the stage and yet he managed to capture this eerily still shot of one of the musicians. 


Mad March, particularly WOMAD, is a special and a little bit magical time of year. It was awesome to be out in it, and it brings a smile to my face even now to revisit the photos that are fantastic memories of the event.