More better photos

More suggestions for good photos of orchestras, and orchestra musicians:

Katie Kellert wrote, in the comments to my first post, in which I complained about how boring orchestra photos are:

I got a big kick out of the alternate shots the Baltimore Symphony did for their members’ bio pages a while back (For instance, Rene Hernandez and Chris Wolfe, showing them with items that seem to reflect their interests outside of music. I also found it telling that a lot of them chose to just have another photo with their instrument… it sort of reads like a lack of imagination to me, but … *shrugs*

These are the photos Katie linked to:

From Porto, in Portugal, Andrew Bennett wrote about what he said (and I agree) is

the hardest bit: how to portray the whole orchestra. While there should also be opportunities to stress that an orchestra comprises individual musician of talent and personality, equally there will be the need to show the orchestra as a whole, and this is fraught with difficulties, mainly the sheer number of people involved. (Look how much easier it is for the ACO, above, with its relatively small line-up.) [He’s talking about the Australian Chamber Orchestra, one of whose photos I liked, and put into my original post.]

Here at Casa d Música we struggle like any colleagues, but I like to think we have some successes with our 94-member symphony orchestra.

Here’s what they’ve tried:

You’ll find more here.

And then Margy Waller offered some images her Cincinnati group, ArtsWave, uses. They change quickly on the ArtsWave site, which makes them hard to capture here. You’ll have to go there to check them out.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions, or other comments! My previous post, with other photos readers suggested, is here.

As before, I’d love to know your thoughts on these photos. I’ll save my own thoughts for later.

Comments

Bryan Townsend says

December 14, 2011 at 11:07 am

As I performer I have had hundreds of photos taken, of which few were very good. But to promote music these days, you need good images! Part of the problem is that photos of musicians playing miss the important aspect: the sound. Almost as pointless as a sound recording of a painter painting…

I think that a good photo of a musician needs to be a good photo, period. That is, it needs to be visually interesting and with human beings as subjects along with the interesting angles and shapes of their instruments, surely a good photographer has lots to work with?