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Jazz 500 - An Overdue Personal Project







Hello again. First, I must apologize for being away for so long. I wish I had more of an excuse to give you, but the fact is, sometimes life just gets in the way. In any case, I’m back just in time for the heart of the festival season. Next up for me is the Monterey Jazz Festival in September. We have our tickets in hand, and can’t wait for this, the 61st edition, of the longest continuously running jazz festival in the world.

 In the meantime, if you’ve followed my Instagram feed in the past, you may have noticed quite a bit more activity than normal. I usually post images live from the festival, and hope to be doing that again this year. In addition, I’ve started a series I’m referring to as Jazz 500 (#jazz500).

 My Jazz Photojournalism adventure began in 1995. A year later, I covered my first Monterey Jazz Festival. Since then, I’ve covered it every year except 1997 and 1998. As you can imagine, after 20 years of photographing some of the greatest legends of the music, I’ve amassed quite a collection of images. Though I’ve published them in the various publications, online magazines, and website collections, it’s a small sampling of the library. It’s time I started sharing more of these images with you.

 Jazz 500 is a personal project where I’m going into the archives and re-editing many of the images in the collection. I’m posting one of these images every day on my Instagram feed @jamesadamsphotography. The goal is to keep this up for at least 500 days. After that, who knows… I might have so much fun revisiting and sharing these images, I may just keep going for another 500. I’m 30 days in so far, and have barely scratched the surface. In addition to the Monterey Jazz Festival, watch for images from Yoshi’s, SFJazz, San Francisco Blues Festival, San Jose Jazz Festival, an more. Please feel free to comment. I’m anxious to hear your feedback.

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