Thought I'd shared these already, but looked, and it doesn't look like. Started really working more with musicians this past year, and really enjoying it.
Here is Sydney, one outdoors on location, two in the studio.
Reminds me of the beautiful woman that played violin for "Celtic Woman" in the beginning! This woman is beautiful in her own right and #1 is great as is #3.
FM Member "Strad" is a world renown violinist and his daughters are musicians also. Hope he chimes in here.
Dan
Danpbphoto wrote:
Reminds me of the beautiful woman that played violin for "Celtic Woman" in the beginning! This woman is beautiful in her own right and #1 is great.
FM Member "Strad" is a world renown violinist and his daughters are musicians also. Hope he chimes in here.
Dan
I love them all; one the second, it looks like it was dark in the studio and her pupil is quite large; one old tip is to shine a flashligh her way to get that down
terryeaton wrote:
I love them all; one the second, it looks like it was dark in the studio and her pupil is quite large; one old tip is to shine a flashligh her way to get that down
Yeah.... a pet peeve of mine. I actually have a continuous light that I shine on them, but I find that the pupil doesn't always respond the way I expect it to. So.... work in progress.
Nice series Ron. Dan let me know about them so I could add my commentary as a violinist/photographer.
Violinists are notoriously difficult to shoot good photos of so you have done an admirable job. Of course it doesn't hurt that your model, Sydney, is gorgeous. The biggest problem is getting an action photo to look as if the person is really playing. To shoot a playing violinist you usually wind up with unattractive facial expressions so you have to resort to posing them with no movement and then they wind up looking tense since that isn't a natural thing to do. That's the biggest problem with #1. She is clearly just standing there holding the instrument as if she were playing it but it's obvious that she really isn't. It seems to me that she has already started to sag a little as you were getting her to pose in a static way. The best solution might have been to ask her to actually play while you get everything set to go and then as her to freeze long enough to take the shot. The other problem with #1 for me is that you have everything cut off at the edges. The top of her head is gone as is the tip if the bow, the frog of the bow, and the A peg. Just a step or two back would have gotten all of her into the frame and eliminated that problem.
#2 is my favorite not only because it is a striking photo of Sydney, but because it is essentially the same as a photo I did of myself with my Strad several years ago, which I then used as a publicity shot for quite awhile. It may just be me, but I would have preferred that the violin be in focus, too. I find it being so soft a bit distracting and I would have had her take off that Kun shoulder rest for the photo. Those ugly yellow surgical tubing covered clamps are distractingly poking out from the lower bought. They should be easy to remove in PS, though.
#2 is more successful as a "playing" shot, although it is obvious that she isn't really playing. The blowing hair, though, helps a lot with the illusion. Her blue dress contrasts nicely with the background and her red violin but the biggest photographic problem I have is I am distracted by that strange line in the backdrop that cuts across the photo right above her head. You might think about smoothing that out or blending it somehow in PS. I hope she doesn't crank the tension on her bow up that far all the time or else one day it is going to snap on her.
Anyway, you've done a very nice job with these and I am sure Sydney will be very happy with them.
Thanks so much for your comments! It was fun that Sydney is gorgeous and she's a childhood friend of my daughter's, so she is very familiar with me and totally comfortable with me.
She's the first chair for her high school chamber orchestra. We did the outdoor shoot first, then I asked her to come to my studio for some creative shots and we did that a week later. When we did the outdoor shoot, I asked her to play the violin and she just said... uh, I can't do that. Turns out, she really just plays reading music and she doesn't really memorize anything, and it made her a bit uncomfortable for me to have asked her to play, and with her mom egging her on. She finally did play something, but it must've been a bit later as you can obviously tell just by looking.
We have easily dozens of shots of her in No. 1, different angles, different bow angles. I had shot another violinist a few weeks later and she was a Lindsey Stirling fan, so she totally got my concept of wanting to be more theatrical.
In No. 2, I can see how the soft focus can bother someone like you. The violin is part of who you are. But I wanted a soft focus on the violin intentionally as I wanted the viewer to go right to her eye and then scan her face before pulling back and looking at the violin. As for the yellow tubing, if I even noticed them, I probably thought they couldn't just be removed. Now I'll know next time. :-)
The backdrop in No. 3 is my reclaimed wood wall/backdrop. It's a bit of a centerpiece at my studio, but I totally see how it could have those distracting lines in this shot. Since I'm so used to it, I barely even notice that anymore. This is the shot that I like the best, tho it can go back and forth between 2 and 3.
I'm glad my comments were helpful, Ron! All the back story is very interesting. Even if she didn't feel comfortable playing anything, just getting her to actually bow some long notes would have done the trick to get her into a more "real" look. In fact, it's possible to get a get a violinist to look like they are really playing without all the other attendant facial distortion by having them lightly bow some long notes. One doesn't meed music for that. (Personally, it never occurs to me that someone might be that unsure of any memorized music since that is probably the easiest part of being a musician for me. I play things from memory that I haven't glanced at the music in decades. But that's just me. )
As to the out of focus violin in #2 - Her violin is not an expensive antiquity that is worthy of study so you made the right choice to keep the point of focus on her eyes. You can easily clone out the yellow shoulder pad feet, which I think would help the overall shot a lot. It should also be very easy to blend together the line in the background of #3 so that it is less distracting. That's up to you but, I could easily make that distraction go away in 30 seconds or less in PS and that would really bump the photo up to the next level. While we are talking about #3 - on my monitor, at least, there is a very slight greenish cast to her hair. If that is in the original, you can easily fix that, too.
Again, good work and I'm sure Sydney is very pleased with what you did for her.
Being a bass guitar player minor squeaking in the sleeve noise was a problem at times in my younger daze!! I used my fingers versus a pick. My fingers are so small, with large palms, I had to slide my left hand lightening fast to get to the next notes in the upper scales.
Dan
Great work, Ron. Your creativity is showing in the last two. They are really stand out attention getting shots. Makes the first one look ordinary by comparison when it's not.
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