Jazz Parade for Democracy Interview with Photographer Rebecca George (11/17/2025)

Dan Doernberg: Monday, November 17, 2025. I'm here with Rebecca George, one of the photographers who took photos at the November 1 Jazz Parade, and she's the only professional photographer who Indivisible Charlottesville has so far worked with… and the pictures were just amazing. Tell us how you prepared yourself, and what your expectations were.

Rebecca: Okay, yeah. I was super excited about it. I have a really good friend, Susan McCully, who I knew was doing the choreography for y'all, and that's how I heard about this. She had been keeping me up to date; “This really cool group of people was putting this parade together.” So every time I met her, she would give me the update, and was just building a lot of excitement over it. And as I was hearing about it from her, I could just picture it in my mind; “It's going to be such a great photo opportunity.” I was just itching to get out there and take pictures. So I just asked her to fill me in on the details and outline the plan for me and I just joined in. So it was great.

Dan: So she gave you a detailed run of show: the parade starts here, stops here.

[0:59] Rebecca: Yeah. I was super lucky to be able to have all that from her, so I could picture what was going to happen. I was familiar with the Downtown Mall, and I knew you were starting at the Pavilion and doing some recessing down, and something would happen at the CODE building, and then receding back. So I did have the overall – I didn't have all the details of it, and I was so excited to just see how it unfolded – but I had enough to definitely pique my interest and also give me some structure about how to photograph it.

Dan: Had you ever done anything like a parade or an outdoor…

Rebecca: No, I’ve never done a parade. I've done protests. I've definitely, definitely showed up and photographed at protests. And I love that. I love the energy of it. And, yeah, and this just seemed like that times ten.

Dan: How was this different from, say, what you had done before at other protests?

[1:44] Rebecca: The excitement level was definitely there. Having an idea of what was actually going to happen, like the street theater aspect of it… you go to a protest and you don't really know what's going to happen, but you're just kind of there, like looking for photo ops. This had a whole narrative arc, and that definitely made it a different experience.

Dan: How did you try and prepare yourself for the moment?

[2:04] Rebecca: I'm from Charlottesville, I spend time on the Downtown Mall. If I had not known that area really well, I would have gone down and scouted it out. But since I could kind of run through it in my mind, I didn't feel like I needed to do that. I would say, if you don't know the area, you definitely want to go look and see: where's the sun and what's going to be happening…where are there obstacles? I think it's nice to also know places that you feel like you can get good perspectives from. So, yeah, just having an idea of the space is a good idea.

[2:29] Dan: If other groups in other cities want to do something like this, what's your sage advice to them?

Rebecca: Well, I think definitely knowing what the plan is, having an idea of what the events are, and what are specific locations where something's going to happen, so the photographers can prepare for that and then be sure that they're going to have a good angle, a clear a lot of sight, that's really important.

[2:52] I think also maybe it's important to know the big players in it; if you're doing this to draw attention to a cause, what's the best way to spread that message, right? And so, we had some big names, we had some names with social media followings in this, and knowing who they are and being able to get pictures of them, I think, is key to having the photographs spread more widely; you get great pictures of them, and you know they have a social media following, then they're going to be likely to share those photos. People are going to look at them because they follow that person, and it's going to bring more attention to it. I feel like that's a good way to nurture the spread of the photos from what you're doing.

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So definitely I’d say just really being prepared for all of that: knowing who's there, who's important to photograph, what's going to happen, what the story arc is. Other than that… general photographic advice, is that kind of what you're looking for here?

Dan: Whatever you think might be helpful.

[3:44] Rebecca: OK. I tend to photograph trying to be as invisible as possible at these things. Because… I don't want people to pose for the photos. You know, I want to get what's happening, and I want to get the realness of it. So I scoot through the crowd and find locations and don't really draw attention to myself, right? Just focusing on what's happening and trying to capture those authentic moments.

[4:03] And technically speaking, I think it's really important to think about… this is one thing that I did, kind of run through my mind to prepare before… is shooting from different angles. We all see the world at eye level, right? So that's the view you have of things. And so if you think about photos that are going to be a little more scroll stopping or attention getting, they're usually a different perspective. So if you can get up high and look down… that's one reason that drone photos are fantastic, right? Because it's a completely different view than we have of life. So I'm pretty short; I look for a chair or table or something, a wall I can stand up on, and get a view from above. And getting views from down low, so, like crouch down and get a view kind of angled up at someone. If you think about movie posters for superhero movies, they're always shot at an up angle, right? Because they, you know, they look like really big and strong. Try it sometimes, you can just do this with the camera on your phone. So just things like that are really interesting and fun things to play with, because that's not the angle that you see. Anybody who's standing there at the parade saw everything at eye level. If you suddenly are showing them photos that are from down low or from up high, then things look different.

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[5:13] It's also important to capture wide shots and zoomed-in shots. As a photographer, I usually have a harness on. I have two camera bodies, and I have a wide angle lens, and a telephoto lens on the other camera. And so I can switch back and forth. And so just from standing in one spot, I can take a photo that's wide, shows the whole crowd… fills the whole frame with people. You can see there's so many people here. And then I can put that camera down, not even move, pick up my other camera and zoom in on somebody who's playing a flute and the look on their face. So it gives you, just from standing in one place, you've got, two different stories really, two different angles on the story you're trying to tell. So, it's a lot of fun to do that.

[5:55] Another thing that's great to think about: because most people in their day-to-day lives are using their cameras on their phones, and they're taking pictures in a vertical format; that's what we see a lot of times online. When you show pictures on your phone they’re in vertical format. Horizontal formats are important too. If you're thinking ahead about what you might be using these photos for… if they're going to go on a web page, you're probably going to want some horizontals like a header of a page and get a lot of attention. If you've got a big crowd, that's going to show up better in a horizontal format, right? So just remembering to not just take pictures like this [Ed.— showing vertical orientation], but to turn [Ed.—flipping hands to show horizontal orientation] and do both.

Horizontal shot used for header (video thumbnail). Photo by Rebecca George Photography, used with permission

You can tell different stories with different aspect ratios, and there's different uses for them… so that's really important.

Dan: Do you have any tips in terms of vertical versus horizontal with social media in mind? I know Facebook, a normal page likes this thing, but an Event Page likes that thing…

[6:48] Rebecca: I think one of the reasons that people do tend more toward verticals is because that shows up better on social media. The typical advice on Instagram is to use a vertical format, because it takes up more space, and so you're getting more attention as you're scrolling through, but, yeah, you do need to think in terms of where on your Facebook page you're going to use different things. The cover photos, the header on a Facebook page, it's horizontal, but it's also narrow horizontal. But those can be so powerful; you want to have a great image there. It can be really lush and a really great way to tell a story.

Dan: You were starting to say something when I jumped in about social media…

[7:22] Rebecca: The other thing that I try to think about at events like this, and when I go to protests, too… sometimes it's great to have some photos that don't show faces for certain purposes, right? You may not want to have to worry about someone's permission, and you want to make sure that people are safe when you're posting photos. And there can be some really great photos that can have a lot of longevity, and be really useful, if you are not including people's faces. So maybe above head level, and you see a lot of signs. Or, in the case of this event, zooming in on instruments, kind of cropping out the faces that are there, but still getting the story that's going on… with some of the details.

Dan: So did you get some nice tuba shots of this one?

Rebecca: You know what? This is something I actually wish I had done more of. I did get some good shots of signs, I think. But I do wish I had had zoomed in a little more and gotten some, some of the details of just the instruments.

Dan: I was just kidding.

Rebecca: So yeah, I was so taken by everybody who was playing. There was so much joy. And, yeah, it was, that was great.

[8:22] Dan: So it's been two weeks now. How do you process what that was like and… just any thoughts that have occurred to you in the two weeks, once the excitement was just a little bit past?

Rebecca: Oh my gosh. I mean, I just want to do more of it. I'm pretty introverted. I don't go to a lot of parties… I don't do a lot of stuff like that, I can find it really exhausting. But at the end of this event, right as it was ending, I had so much adrenaline and so much energy…

Dan: That’s great.

Rebecca: And I saw a friend of mine, and she was like, “This is so great!” And I'm like, “I know. We should do a jazz parade every weekend!!” The organizers are like, “This was a lot of work. We're not doing it every weekend!”

Dan: Every weekend!? What are we going to do on the other five days?

Rebecca: I’m sure the organizers are like, “This was a lot of work, we’re not doing this every weekend!”

Dan: Yeah, I’m guessing that will be a tough sell.

Rebecca: But anyway, it was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it. I would totally do it again, yeah. I loved it.

[9:14] Dan: What was your sense of the crowd? We think it was like 750 people total, at various times, and some of the people who were having coffee, on the little cafe tables, some of those people joined in, not most of them… but what was your sense of that kind of energy of the day?

Rebecca: Yeah, I thought it was great. I mean, I loved that. I definitely saw some people fall into it, and get sucked along by it, get carried along by that energy and that wave moving down the Mall, and that was really great. I remember overhearing somebody saying something like, “What are these people doing? Oh, it's, is it a protest? What's going on? Oh, there are signs…” And that was so interesting. The signs were fantastic. They were not anything you could argue with. It didn't feel partisan so much as it just felt like good issues that everybody could get behind.

[9:59] Dan: Is there anything else about the event that has seemed salient?

Rebecca: I think that probably covers it. Like I said, I think it had such great energy and so much creativity, and just felt like such an inviting way to get together in community. I just would love to see more of this happen.

Dan: Okay… if we do these every weekend, know you're at the top of the photographer list.

Rebecca: I have to do it?

Dan: Exactly. It was your idea, you can't back out now.

Rebecca: I’m there, I’m there!

Dan: Yeah… So let me leave with one final question. I hate to indulge in stereotypes, but my sense is that photographers like to talk about their gear; is there anything that you would like to divulge about what camera you used, or what kind of lenses, or anything like that?

[10:37] Rebecca: I'm happy to share that. I started out on Canon years ago, and I wanted to upgrade to a mirrorless camera, and at that time, Canon wasn't making one, so I switched to Sony. I love my Sony cameras. And, like I said, I usually have a harness on that two camera bodies hang from. So I have one camera body with a 28-70 lens on it, and then one with the 70-180 lens on it, and that just allows me to have a lot of range. So both of those, you know, have some flexibility. They're not prime lenses. There's some zooming that happens, but I can, zoom out and get the crowd, I can zoom in and get details, and that's really the way I like to shoot for this kind of event.

Dan: Okay, now the secrets are out.

[11:18] One thing I haven't said is that the pictures you took were just amazing, people kind of stopped dead in their tracks. Having a professional photographer with those lenses that you just mentioned, whatever they were… the shots were just spectacular. So thank you again, we really appreciated it. Just leave your calendar open for all the weekends in 2026

Rebecca: All the weekends that we're gonna have more jazz parades?

Dan: Exactly…

Rebecca: I’m there, I’m there, just let me know!

Dan: Not all of them are jazz parades, there may just be some animal circus acts… you know, we haven’t decided.

Rebecca: I love animals, that’s awesome!

Dan: Yeah, yeah, we'll have fun. Okay, thank you so much for talking with us.

Rebecca: Thank you.

Dan: Take care. Bye-bye.

DMU Timestamp: December 17, 2025 02:57

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