Good Breakfast, Bad Photographer

2Summers | 10 July 2011
johannesburg melville architecture weather music jazz

Today I attended a “Jazz Breakfast” fundraiser on the roof of a vacant building in Melville, to raise money for an upcoming poetry festival at the Melville Visitors Centre. The weather was splendid, the view was sensational, the conversation was pleasant, and the music was lovely. It was a perfectly enjoyable – and blog-able – morning. I had a blast taking photos.

View of the Joburg skyline from the roof of the old Nike shop on 4th Avenue in Melville. Tables ready and waiting for jazz breakfast revelers.

Unfortunately, due to a grave operator error, all but a handful of the frames I shot were lost. In other words, I was a total idiot and erased them. Words cannot convey the depth of my despair and self-loathing. Joe tried to console me by saying he’s made the same mistake, more than once. I still hate myself, especially because I wanted to write a nice post about the day for my friends at the Melville Visitors Centre.

I managed to salvage four decent pics, all of which were taken in the first ten minutes of the breakfast (before anyone else had arrived).

Another take on the beautiful view. Later on, I took several nice shots of people actually sitting at the tables, talking and laughing, drinking colorful glasses of fruit juice and feasting on eggs and bacon. I destroyed those images by prematurely pressing the "format card" button on the back of my camera.
Our morning entertainment: The Hannah Wildflower Trio. They were fabulous. I took many photos of people listening to the music while raising steaming cups of coffee to their lips. I also took more, and far better, photos of the performers themselves. But they’re gone. All gone.
In a vain attempt to make myself feel better, I decided to dress up this picture by making it black-and-white.

I like to think that my erased photos are in photo heaven now, looking down at me hunched over my laptop and laughing their asses off.

RIP, Jazz Breakfast Photos.