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Recently I stumbled upon an excellent post by Michael Zhang on my new favorite tech-centered photography blog, PetaPixel. Zhang starts his piece with this fantastic summary of a fascinating test with some interesting implications:

“In 2007, Washington Post writer Gene Weingarten conducted a social experiment in which he recruited one of the world’s great violinists, Joshua Bell, to play in a Washington D.C. subway station. Just two days prior to the experiment, Bell had played in a sold-out Boston theater in which ordinary tickets sold for $100 apiece. The entire experiment was filmed using a hidden camera. [I’ve included the clip below]

In the end, of the 1,097 people who passed by Joshua Bell, only seven stopped to listen to the music. His 45-minute performance of six famous (though not necessarily recognizable) classical pieces earned $32.17 from 27 passersby, with some dropping pennies. As a result of his experiment and subsequent article for the Post, Weingarten won the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing.”

How does this make you feel? Would you have stopped? If you find this to be as intriguing as I do, I’d encourage you to check out Zhang’s full story by clicking here. Zhang goes on to write about some trends in contemporary photography and how they relate to Weingarten’s work. It’s a really great read.

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!

-Mason