Musical Instruments

[austin granger]

On the Altar, Cordelia Lutheran Church, Idaho by Austin Granger, on Flickr

[Don Dudenbostel]

I’ve been lazy and haven’t done any collodion in a few years and have posted these in another thread but I think they qualify as instruments.

These are posted from my phone and not sure if the files are large enough.

[Ulophot]

Paul Ulanowsky's (my father's) violin. A little self-assignment, as it were, done in my study a few nights ago. 4x5, 135mm, HP5+

[John Layton]

Philip that's a wonderful and thoughtful image - with a bit of meaningful tension also...in the bow, the strings - and how that page just wants to flip! Almost like you'd been practicing and noticed something about the light...put your intsrument, bow, and score down briefly to pull off an image that was perfect, and then resumed practicing!

[Iga]

Beautifully composed and masterfully executed, Philip ! Congrats !

[Kerosene Hat]

Philip, that is a great image. Did you do anything special with the plane of focus?

Very good, looks like fair front tilt to get the musical composition, instrument and other items sharp in the plane.

Well-arranged, good perspective, and perfectly lit. Very, very nice.

[h2oman]

Yes, beautiful, Philip.

[Ulophot]

Thank you all.

Nothing "special" with the plane of focus; a healthy front tilt, essentially along the top of the violin, and an aperture (22, I think) to bring the score in front into sharpness up to about the fourth staff from bottom.

I can add two notes that might be of interest to some. I used a single light source and got everything pretty much set up, but the sharpness of some of the shadows and the arrangement of light and dark wasn't quite what I wanted, even after hanging some sheets of diffusion gel to create some additional shadows. I took a large piece of patterned lace fabric and hung it in front of the light to break it up, which, with a little adjustment, made all the difference in that respect. Nice to have a powerful LED light for constant viewing ability, sharp shadows when wanted, and without the heat of halogens.

I'll post in The Setup ad Shot for anyone interested.

The second factor came in printing. I got to a print that pleased me pretty well on my standard paper, Ilford WTF, but I had brought my Fomatone to the darkroom also. Although in earlier testing the two papers had seemed to be very close in most of the scale, my first print of this image on the Foma immediately showed a significant difference in the rendering of the lower middle tones that I felt improved the composition. Back in the days of many papers, serious printers often tried various ones to see which best suited a given image. The choices are fewer now, of course, but this experience reaffirmed my decision to keep the two papers on hand.

[Joe O'Hara]

You get an "A" in this assignment.

Did (or does) your Father love Schubert? I do.

[Ulophot]

You get an "A" in this assignment.

Did (or does) your Father love Schubert? I do.

Thank you for asking. My father (1908-1968) did indeed love Schubert. Dad was one of the leading accompanists of the mid-20th C., perhaps most widely associated with Lotte Lehmann, but much in demand by singers and instrumentalists alike. He and his siblings all learned string instruments early on, and he continued playing the violin or viola in informal chamber music get-togethers with friends. I fondly remember getting to stay up as a very young child to listen to a bit of Eine Kleine Nacht Musik before being packed off to bed. I keep a web site for him here, if you're interested: www.paul-ulanowsky.org.

Schubert is one of my muses as well; would that i could make the piano sing as he did.