Woodstock

Woodstock is a town in Ulster County, New York, USA. The population was 5,884 at the 2010 census, down from 6,241 at the 2000 census.

"In my view, a photographer is someone who photographs. Not someone who thinks about photographing, or who wants to photograph, but someone who does it, preferably day in and day out." - Frank Van Riper

PHOTO FRIDAY

THE CURRENT CHALLENGE

Fri Dec 19, 2014

This week’s challenge:

‘Winter’.

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Sphinx

Isn’t life more than that? Doesn’t existence itself rise above all the things that

happen—the goods, the bads, the rights, the wrongs, the judgments? Isn’t it a

kindness to be here? Isn’t this a special moment—this moment called being alive?

How aware am I of it? How much do I recognize it?

What am I concerned about today? Am I the least bit concerned about something

that is finer than the finest hair—something that cannot be measured in width,

height, or weight and that is the only difference between me and that headstone?

Do you know what it is? It’s the breath that comes in and out of me.

You cannot take a picture of it. You cannot paint it. You cannot make a statue of it.

You cannot give it, buy it, trade it, or sell it. And it makes all the difference between

you and your headstone. Because breath comes, you’re intelligent. Because it comes,

you are Mr. So-and-So, Mrs. So-and-So, Miss So-and-So, Dr. So-and-So, Captain

So-and-So, Professor So-and-So. And thanks to this gift of breath, you have the

capability to understand, to question, to reason, to observe, and to learn.

—Prem Rawat

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Woodstock III

I still find each day too short for all the thoughts I want to think, all the walks I want to take, all the books I want to read, and all the friends I want to see.
John Burroughs 

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Woodstock II

The Film

The documentary film Woodstock, directed by  and edited by Thelma Schoonmaker and Martin Scorsese, was released in 1970. Artie Kornfeld (one of the promoters of the festival) came to Fred Weintraub, an executive at Warner Bros., and asked for money to film the festival. Previously, Artie had been turned down everywhere else, but Fred Weintraub became his hero and, against the express wishes of other Warner Bros. executives, Weintraub put his job on the line and gave Kornfeld $100,000 to make the film. Woodstock helped to save Warner Bros at a time when the company was on the verge of going out of business. The book Easy Riders, Raging Bulls details the making of the film.

Wadleigh rounded up a crew of about 100 from the New York film scene. With no money to pay the crew, he agreed to a double-or-nothing scheme, in which the crew would receive double pay if the film succeeded and nothing if it bombed. Wadleigh strove to make the film as much about the hippies as the music, listening to their feelings about compelling events contemporaneous with the festival (such as the Vietnam War), as well as the views of the townspeople.

Woodstock received the Academy Award for Documentary Feature. The film has been deemed culturally significant by the United States Library of Congress. In 1994, Woodstock: The Director's Cut was released and expanded to include Janis Joplin as well as additional performances by Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Canned Heat not seen in the original version of the film. In 2009, the film was re-released on DVD. This release marks the film's first availability on Blu-ray disc.

Another film on Woodstock named Taking Woodstock was produced in 2009 by Taiwanese American filmmaker Ang Lee.  [Wiki]

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Woodstock I

Inspirational Town!
Woodstock was initiated through the efforts of Michael Lang, John Roberts, Joel Rosenman, and Artie Kornfeld. It was Roberts and Rosenman who had the finances. Lang had experience as a promoter and had already organized the largest festival on the East Coast at the time, the Miami Pop Festival, which had an estimated 100,000 people attend the two day event. Roberts and Rosenman placed the following advertisement in The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal under the name of Challenge International, Ltd.: "Young men with unlimited capital looking for interesting, legitimate investment opportunities and business propositions".

Lang and Kornfeld noticed the ad, and the four men got together originally to discuss a retreat-like recording studio in Woodstock, but the idea evolved into an outdoor music and arts festival, although even that was initially envisioned on a smaller scale, perhaps featuring some of the big name artists who lived in the Woodstock area (such as Bob Dylan and The Band). There were differences in approach among the four: Roberts was disciplined, and knew what was needed in order for the venture to succeed, while the laid-back Lang saw Woodstock as a new, relaxed way of bringing businesspeople together. There were further doubts over the venture, as Roberts wondered whether to consolidate his losses and pull the plug, or to continue pumping his own finances into the project.  [Wiki]

Beauty is certainly a soft, smooth, slippery thing, and therefore of a nature which easily slips in and permeates our souls.

Plato, Lysis

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