UN International Jazz Day - Gary Martin

Wednesday, April 30, was UN International Jazz Day.  There were events throughout the city. At EPCOR Gary Martin (of the Funk Brothers fame) gave a talk about the difference between Jazz and the Blues.

If I were a jazz musician, his talk may have been amazing.  He was very riveting.  Unfortunately, he lost me soon after he said that Jazz was numeric and Blues was alphabetic.  I thought he meant the timing, but it was much more than that. (I'm also numerically challenged.) As he spoke of the color of tones and the texture of chords I was discretely taking portrait shots of him with my Canon G15.

Since so much of Gary's talk was about the color of Jazz, the tones, I thought that I would use the Nik HDR effect to jazz up Gary's photo.  At first I thought the results were too stunning.  It took a few tries to get a balance between natural and colorful.  I like this version, especially the various shades of blues in his shirt and the tones of his skin.  Wasn't happy about the greenish color of his guitar, but I couldn't figure out a way to make it more brown.

So, enough goofing with the Nik.  I think it's time to get serious and actually look at some Nik tutorial videos.

Links:

• UN International Jazz Day - National Music Centre
• JazzYYC
• Nik software lessons on YouTube