Zire Photography

08/25/2026

Jazzy Nights and Blues Interviews Kendrick Smith

Jazzy Nights and Blues had the opportunity to interview saxophonist Kendrick Smith during the All Star St. Louis Jazz Festival at The Dark Room / The Grandel Performing Arts Theater in St. Louis, Missouri.

Mr. Smith shared the stage with an incredible group of musicians: Ptah Williams on piano, Bob Deboo on bass, and Marty Morrison on drums. The Kranzberg Arts Foundation, Jazz St. Louis, and WSIE 88.7 The Sound hosted the event.

What stood out was not only the performance, but the spirit around it — the respect between musicians, the discipline behind the sound, and the way jazz continues to serve as a living record of community and culture.

This ZPG Visual Archive Feature preserves Kendrick Smith as more than a performer in a single moment. It honors him as part of the ongoing St. Louis jazz story — rooted in sound, shaped by study, and carried forward through performance.

Feature: Jazzy Nights and Blues
Location Pathway: BLINK STL
Publisher: Zire Photography and Graphics

08/23/2026

Annika speaks about growing up surrounded by music — and the moment she began to understand that what she carried was not just love for the sound, but real talent.

In this Jazzy Nights and Blues interview feature, she reflects on the early musical influences that shaped her voice, her confidence, and her path as an artist. Some people discover music. Others are raised inside it — hearing it, feeling it, absorbing it long before they ever step into the spotlight.

Annika’s story reminds us that talent is often planted early, but it still has to be recognized, nurtured, and claimed.

Artist: Annika Chambers / Annika Chambers-DesLauriers
Event: Gateway Arch Blues At The Arch Music Series
Feature: Interview Video
Project: Jazzy Nights and Blues
Publisher: Zire Photography and Graphics

This is a story about music, memory, growth, and the beautiful moment an artist realizes: I can really do this.

08/23/2026

Johnny Rawls talks about the music that shaped him — and the joy that keeps him performing.

In this interview moment from the Jazzy Nights and Blues archive, Johnny reflects on his musical inspirations, the artists and sounds that helped guide his path, and what it still means to step on stage and connect with an audience.

That is the beautiful thing about the blues: it is memory, feeling, discipline, and joy all moving through one voice.

Artist: Johnny Rawls
Feature: Interview Video
Event: Gateway Arch Blues At The Arch Music Series
Project: Jazzy Nights and Blues
Location: BLINK STL
Publisher: Zire Photography and Graphics

This is more than an interview. It is an artist speaking from experience, gratitude, and love for the music.

08/22/2026

08/20/2026

Happy Birthday to KRS-One — The Teacha.

Some artists make records.
Some artists make moments.
KRS-One turned the microphone into a classroom.

From Boogie Down Productions to *The Gospel of Hip Hop*, from “My Philosophy” to the Temple of Hip Hop, his work has always pushed the culture beyond entertainment. He reminded us that Hip-Hop is not just something we listen to — it is something we study, practice, protect, and live.

As a Bronx-raised photographer and lifelong student of the culture, documenting KRS-One has always meant more than capturing an image. It means preserving a voice that challenged us to think deeper, stand stronger, and understand Hip-Hop as knowledge, movement, ethics, and purpose.

Happy Birthday to the Blastmaster.
Respect to The Teacha.
Thank you for the lessons, the discipline, the courage, and the living blueprint.

Hip-Hop is still rising.

📸 Photography / Archive: Zire Photography & Graphics
🟢 Feature: This Week in Hip-Hop Preservation
📍 BLINK NY / TWIHHP Visual Archive

🎤+ 📙:
🎧+ 🔊:
🧑🏽‍🎨+📝: officiallipgame
📸: Zire Photography
📰: The What Is Hip-Hop Project / BLACK LINK MEDIA

08/20/2026

There are performances you hear—and performances you can almost see moving through the musician.

At the 2018 Phoenix Amplified Soul Experience at Tempe Center for the Arts, percussionist Victor Orlando brought that kind of physical energy to the stage. Under a focused light, his hands moved toward the bongos while his expression remained concentrated and controlled. The movement of his hands, body, and hair became part of the performance's visual language.

Percussion is physical, but musicianship is never simply movement. Timing, touch, restraint, repetition, and instinct determine whether rhythm merely produces sound or actually carries the music forward.

That balance between high energy and deep concentration is what made this moment worth preserving.

Part of the Jazzy Nights & Blues / BLINK AZ visual archive.

Read the full article at: ZirePhotos.com

📸 Photography and Story by Tyrone “Zire” McCants
Zire Photography and Graphics

A live-performance feature on percussionist Victor Orlando playing bongos with intensity at the 2018 Phoenix Amplified Soul Experience.

08/20/2026

BK LOVES MJ — A BIRTHDAY TRIBUTE TO MICHAEL JACKSON

With Michael Jackson’s birthday approaching on **August 29**, I’m revisiting **BK Loves MJ** as both a visual archive and a tribute to the legacy he left behind.

Brooklyn celebrated that legacy through music, dance, art, family, and community. **DJ Spinna, Spike Lee, Snoop Dogg, Dr. Bob Lee**, performers, artists, and generations of fans all became part of a living remembrance.

What stayed with me most were the moments beyond the stage: handmade memorials, painted portraits, children on their parents’ shoulders, fan performances, drum circles, and people simply sharing the music together.

Michael Jackson’s work continues to move through generations because people keep carrying it forward.

This is my photographic tribute to that legacy.

📸 **Tyrone “Zire” McCants**

A first-person visual archive of Spike Lee’s BK Loves MJ celebrations in Brooklyn in 2009, 2010, and 2011.

08/09/2026

Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature, Slick Rick, and Busta Rhymes brought hip-hop history to Brooklyn’s Wingate Field in 2010.

08/09/2026

The Mural Mile: Art Along the Mississippi

One of the things that interested me most about photographing St. Louis’ Mural Mile was realizing that I was not simply photographing individual graffiti pieces.

I was documenting a wall that continually rewrites itself.
The Mississippi River floodwall has become a long-form public gallery filled with graffiti, style writing, portraits, characters, lettering, abstract forms, and large-scale mural work connected to Paint Louis. Artists add new pieces, older work fades, and sections disappear beneath new layers of paint. Changing authorship is part of the story.

When I first visited the area, it was completely empty. That gave me the opportunity to photograph both the artwork and the larger environment around it—the concrete, utility lines, rail infrastructure, industrial buildings, open land, and the distant St. Louis skyline.

Those wider photographs matter because they establish where the art actually lives.

It is not separated from the city inside a traditional gallery. It exists inside an active industrial landscape, exposed to weather, time, new artists, and the constant possibility of being replaced.

That is why I see the Mural Mile as a living cultural archive.

Graffiti was made to be seen in public, but photography gives temporary work another life. A piece may eventually disappear from the wall, while the photograph continues preserving its color, scale, visual language, and place within a particular moment.

Documentation gives the present a future.

Explore The Mural Mile: Art Along the Mississippi through the

ZPG Visual Archive at ZirePhotography.com.
Photography: Tyrone “Zire” McCants�Archive: Various Places — The Mural Mile�Projects: TWIHHP | BLINK STL�Location: St. Louis, Missouri

Explore The Mural Mile as a living public archive of graffiti, hip-hop memory, and style writing, revealing community and creative discipline in public life.

05/06/2026

Recognizing the Shift

The times are changing.
Not slowly.
Not quietly.
Clearly.

The way people move, build, communicate, and create—
It’s all shifting.

And I’m paying attention.

I’m studying the patterns.
I’m learning what works now.
I’m adjusting where needed and sharpening what already works.

This isn’t about reacting.
This is about positioning.

I feel the shift in my thinking.

More innovative.
More creative.
More driven.

That’s what happens when you stop resisting change
and start understanding it.

Some people wait for clarity.
I build while it’s forming.

That’s the difference.

— Mr. Zire