A Camera in the Crowd

The blog is currently on indefinite hiatus.

A Camera in the Crowd[1], also known as Camera Crowd is a music and photography blog and was started in the summer of 2006 between two friends: Anne Lai and Charlie Lumanlan. They have already tried starting and running different photography/music communities(Exposing Distortion and Enteraction) for two years.

The two bloggers live in different cities, Anne is 18 and attends Parsons the New School for Design in New York, majoring in photography, but also lives in Houston/Austin, and Charlie is 22 and lives in San Francisco. Posts are written by both bloggers with the bylines located at the bottom of every post.

There a few favorite bands that Camera Crowd will keep close tabs on and inform readers if anything new happens with these bands. This is including, but not excluding any future favorites:

• Voxtrot [2]
• Sparrow House [3]
• Peter and the Wolf [4]
• Explosions in the Sky [5]
• Rilo Kiley/Jenny Lewis [6]

This blog's pace is slower than other blogs, giving time to readers to digest every post and song. This also ensures that the bands featured are actually worthy of recognition.

The blog features several types of regular posts:

3 minute entry: a post kept short and easy for the reader to read in three minutes or less. The concise description style still provides a good idea of what the band/artist sounds like and includes mp3s and links for the ones who want to know more. These short reads refreshes and separates it from the usual lengthier and in-depth posts on the blog.

Upcoming Release: a post that features upcoming albums from artists that the bloggers are familiar with, it doesn't appear frequently though. So with these, they will include history of the band, talk about previous albums in the band's catalog, new upcoming tours and most importantly the new album. There is a track-by-track short one line description that readers can read by hovering their cursor over any of the tracks in the tracklisting section. Typically three downloads are made available to stream and download, depending on how many songs are on the album.

Oh Snap!: a post that was introduced in January 2007, exclusively written by Charlie. He features photography gizmos and gadgets and other photography-related websites and a flickr pool. People who knows of any photography-related news are encouraged to email them.

Anticipate: a post written on upcoming tours by bands that are more well-known and have already been introduced usually through a 3 minute entry or another previous post.

Singled Out: a post that is basically a track review, but without a scale or rating system. Despite the name, the songs that are featured aren't necessarily singles, but the songs must be available officially on the band's website, label's website or MySpace. This is an attempt to keep readers up to date with a band's crowd favorite so they can sing along at a show.

Other general posts include:

Show reviews: talking about the show not by a technical point, but noting the emotional peaks of the show. Posts will include information about upcoming tour dates, photos from the show and several mp3s. Unlike casual point and shoot snapshots of a show many see on most music blog posts, camera crowd is after all run by two avid photographers and there are always the "for more photos" linking to their Flickrs at the end of the posts.

Playlists: mostly with a holiday theme or season. The playlist will always be up for streaming on a flash player.

Beneath the header of the blog is an announcements section titled pass it on. This contains short updates on Camera Crowd's favorite bands and music or photo-related news for interested readers to pass on. It also gives a reminder to readers of upcoming posts and to tell readers if Anne or Charlie is attending a show that night.

Camera Crowd is an ad-free blog and relies on YouSendIt to provide downloads, so all songs will only be available for 7 days. But if the reader emails them the artist name and song title, Anne or Charlie will send the song directly back.

For the photography part of the blog, readers can access the Camera Crowd photoblog by clicking on one of two thumbnails located on the right of the music blog page or directly here [7] The photoblog features three guest photographers and gives talented photographers exposure and feedback on their work for a duration of three months. After the three months Camera Crowd begins accepting applications again for a new group of guest photographers. Other than the rotating three photographers, Anne and Charlie also post photos on the blog.

Past guest photographers include:

• Nicole Cooke[8]
• Kennedy[9]
• Amanda Olbrys[10]

• Jane Berger[11]
• Veronique Moseley-Labordus[12]
• Glen Hertz[13]

There are some tentative plans to branch out the photography part of Camera Crowd, which will be announced in early 2008.

In the end, this is a relatively young blog run by two music fans. They welcome CDs, demos and anything that will help the blog run, go to the music blog for the email address.