AL ALVARADO

 From 1999 to 2014, I covered the Seabreeze 106 Smooth Jazz Festival. What started with just a few hours one Saturday night in the Gulf of Mexico resort town of Seaside, FL, blossomed over the years to 8,000 music lovers over a four-day period in Frank Brown Park in Panama City Beach, FL.

Several years ago, I put together a self-published photo book that contained over 300 images taken from my coverage that I called "Sweet Sixteen". I thought I would spend some time selecting one of my better images of each individual performer for posting on my blog and flickr. This will take some time as I have images of 66 different performers taken over the 16- year period. Every once in a while (probably once a month), I will toss in a documentary/street image taken more recently with my latest acquisition, a Fuji X-Pro2 w/XF 35mmf2 WR lens.

Today's image is of one of the local artists, Al Alvarado, who used to be part of Jones & Company. This shot of Al is at the venue in Watercolor in 2003. The festival was at this location only in 2003 before moving to a bigger location.

Al was a super friendly guy and a great musician who played several different horns. He loved going out among the crowd and getting up close and personal.