Well…the thread is calming down. With its flood of comments.
See my previous posts — I complain that orchestra photos are very bad, and then, in response to comments, I post two installments of better ones, suggested by readers, here and here.
But I do want to show some other photos readers sent me, or led me to. On Facebook, Julian Day, a composer and radio producer I met in Australia, said the Australian Brandenburg Orchestra, a period instrument group, has lively photos.
For instance:
And Julian seconded my thought, in my original post, that the Australian Chamber Orchestra (adventurous in so many ways), has lively photos, too. See my post for an example.
I’d mentioned that Margy Waller of Artswave, in Cincinnati, had cited photos on the Artswave site, which were hard for me to copy, because they changed so quickly.
So she emailed two for me to post. With this comment:
I use these as examples in my talks about communicating for more support. They are good examples of how we’ve changed. One is from an old fundraising campaign, the other one we use now in materials and on our site.
Guess which is which!
It’s sort of classic – in one the community is supporting the orchestra and the other, the orchestra is out IN the community. 🙂
Here they are:
As before, I’m reserving any thoughts on these that I might have. To make space for yours!
Happy holidays to everyone. Though I’ll add a longer greeting in a bit.
This whole discussion seems rather silly to me. Nothing musicians do is ever enough is it? It isn’t enough that you work for years to perfect your playing, play concerts year in and year out, deal with management, dwindling budgets, and general life itself. None of these are enough for bored, sated, modern audiences looking for a thrill. Now orchestral musicians must be CAMERA READY too; photogenic, cool, hip, sexy, fascinating – on and on. Why can’t people just go to a concert and listen to the music they claim to love so much without looking for some kind of titillation, be it visual or otherwise?
My take on it is that good photographs are so easy to do yet make so much difference. Good photography is everywhere, that is why musicians’ photographs often stand out as being not really up to standard.
You make good points though Elaine, and personally I am bored with everything having to be sexy. Recently there was an article in the U.K. Telegraph about how now quantuum physics is ‘sexy’. I really don’t get it; when I was at college and in my twenties, sexy usually meant short skirts and eye make-up, not quantuum physics, classical music and everything else. However the U.K. is sex obsessed, maybe that is why we have the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe and STIs are rife.
A poor performance cannot be saved by a photograph no matter how good . Isn’t Cincinnati the place
where they have instituted the deplorable custom of a seating section in the concert hall for the air heads
to contact each other on the progress of the performance ?
I am so upset that I have been unable to root out a photo that our local symphony incessantly uses in its advertisements. It consists of an unflattering depiction of a single violinist seemingly struggling to play the notes in front of her. And they somehow think this will entice an audience? Even I know better (I’m a conductor, not a marketer.)