Publicity Shoot with Young Musicians

I recently completed a publicity shoot with two musicians, Ben Gregor-Smith (cello) and Katrina Brown (viola).  Every freelance musician needs publicity shots for event programmes as well as websites and other media. Making these is very different from shooting musicians in rehearsal or performance.  The approach is basically that of photographic portraiture.  However, there is often (posed) musical "action", and the  instrument figures prominently in every image.

We started in my studio, which is in my home.  The space is 15 feet (into a bay window) by 12, and doubles as my study and digital darkroom. The ceiling is 8 feet high.  These dimensions prove only just adequate.

The studio images were all made with a white background ("high key" style).  This is a bit of a photographic cliche but it shows off the colour and texture of string instruments to good effect, and makes a dramatic contrast with the dark concert dress usually worn by both men and women.

I found both Katrina and Ben had a great visual sense of what would make a good image -- they both did Art A-level which may have something to do with it.  The work was a meeting of creative minds, as we shared ideas and found out together what worked and what didn't. They were a pleasure to work with, and the time raced by!


We called one image "Girl with a Pearl Earring":

We moved on to the Sheffield Botanical Gardens, which are full of photographic opportunities.  The weather was unpromising, and we only managed a few shots before we had to take cover from rain, first under the entrance portico:

and then in the glass pavilions:

 

More images of Ben here and of Katrina here.


This was a very enjoyable assignment and I'd be very glad to hear from other musicians requiring publicity shots.

Music in the Round returns to the Crucible Studio

I've long appreciated the challenge of photographing chamber music concerts.  Normally, of course, this is forbidden, because it can disturb the audience, quite apart from the ban routinely imposed by venues.  Last week I was invited to shoot the final concert of Music in the Round's annual May Festival.   This event was significant for two reasons: it was Peter Cropper's last Festival before retiring as Artistic Director, and the first Festival back in the Crucible Studio after reburbishment.

The musicians say that performing in the round, in the unforgivingly precise accoustic of the Studio, is initially terrifying but ultimately exciting and uniquely rewarding.  Peter Cropper's vision has brought us a special immediacy of rapport between audience and players. It is this that I have tried to capture in these images.

It's essential to use a silent (mirrorless) camera and to be positioned unobtrusively rather than in the thick of the audience.  This was the first major outing for my Canon G11 compact camera.  It coped reasonably well at ISO 400 but images made at ISO 800 to reduce subject movement blur were rather more compromised.  This first image shows the expectant audience:

The most challenging images were those showing both performers and audience when the house lights were down -- the small sensor's dynamic range is scarcely up to this.  Of course, you can't combine images of moving subjects to extend this range, but blending multiple RAW "exposures" or localised Photoshop levels and curves adjustments improved matters somewhat:

My favorite shot of the night shows the flourish of string players' bows in the instant following the very last note of the final piece of the Festival, Schubert's monumental Octet:

Peter Cropper, delayed in France by volcanic ash, arrived too late to perform in the concert.  He just made it in time to receive the appreciation of the audience at the end of the evening:

This outing confirms Canon's wisdom in reducing the pixel density of the G11 as compared with the G10.  It also confirms the benefit of Canon's restoration of the swivelling LCD screen, last seen on the G6.  In terms of image quality, the G11 is a great improvement on the G6, which I sold to help finance the G11. I'm glad not to have invested in any of the intervening G series cameras!

More images are posted on my website.