Making Music

I wanted to try something different with these pictures. As someone said to me recently, it can be fun to ‘make’ a photograph rather than just to ‘take’ the picture. The following photographs were made using everyday equipment and with no editing. 

As a keen musician I enjoy the range of emotions which music can provoke and I wanted to capture some of this in the photos. From a tempestuous symphony to a delicate sonata, I tried to represent a flavour of the different feelings associated with music. 

For these pictures I used the shutter priority mode and speeds ranging from 1 second to 1/60 second. I used a dark sheet for the background and an uplighter and a torch to create the lighting which I wanted. The faster shutter speeds of 1/60 second were used for the clarinet pictures to catch the glitter burst. I slowed the shutter down for the guitar photos and used incense sticks to paint across the picture. In the first guitar picture I used a star filter on the camera lens to bring the lights to life. 

The camera was mounted on a tripod and I used a cable shutter release. Doing this avoided camera shake and also afforded greater flexibility in using the props to create the images.

This is just the first effort and might lead to a more detailed project in time. I prefer not to edit images after taking them so will need to come up with a range of different ways to make further images as opposed to just taking photographs of musical instruments.