There is a new festival in Tallinn called Tallinn Maritime Days. It was about time as Tallinn is City by the sea after all and there has been too little or no celebration of this fact.

It was also sentimental trip back in time for me. In Youth I have sailed on Sedov and Kruzenshtern, two largest tall ships in the world. A few tall ships were also visiting town on this festival. I use to photograph boats way back then with old Smena film camera, it was so different now to do same with modern camera gear. Thinking back it was one of my best experiences to be able to sail on those boats. Those were days when all sails on Kruzenshtern were old type heavy cotton. Something that no tall ship has these days.

But back to music photography as this is main topic of this blog.

On this event Jazzkaar presented 2 concerts. Sea terminal was converted into music venue and they did remarkable job at it! My favorite concert was Night with Saxophones. Two Estonian saxophone players Villu Veski and Raivo Tafenau  were on stage with excellent band. All saxophone types were used except Baritone. Artists joked that they are too poor to purchase these instruments. They were talking on stage about saxophones between pieces and it all was delivered with great humor. It was also educating for example I found out that both were playing with post WW2 Selmer instruments and why they used these instruments.

Program was made up from several jazz standards, few their own pieces and couple pop tunes.

Light as always was too low for good photography but I got a few shots. At times needed to go with ISO above 1000. Wish I had light wide angle, at least F 2.8. As always doing most pics with F2.8 70 – 200. I hate red spotlights on stage.