Rebecca Wenham - Cleopatra at the Cello
Wednesday, January 04, 2017
 |
| Rebecca Wenham - January 4, 2017 Fuji Colour Instant Film print |
A frequent repeating theme in my blogs is that a photographer
is much like one of those American gunfighters of the 19th century, stars
of many Hollywood films. Any one of those gunfighters was as good as his last
gunfight. We can guess the consequence if they were a tad slow or their eyes were
not as sharp.
A photographer is as good as his (I’m a guy) last
photograph. Those who are here can judge from these two Fuji Instant Film
prints, and one reversed peel from one of them which I took today of Vancouver
cellist Rebecca (Becky Wenham). I also shot colour negative film on my Mamiya
RB-67 and with my Fuji X-E1. They will all be sharper than these. I still like
the inherent look of this film which is sadly discontinued.
The easiest process for failure in a photographic session
with a person is not to have some ideas on who to proceed. In my case I seem to
have a long history of taking portraits of cellists including two male
cellists. The problem with portraits of musicians is that someone has done
before any pose you might think is original. In fact to photograph a musician
involves copying a cliché and hiding (if that is possible in this 21st
century) its provenance.
One of the really original portraits of a musician is thisone taken by Arnold Newman of Igor Stravinsky. Any other pianist portrait will
be a cliché.
In the case of Becky Wenham I had two ideas that I had
previously explored with American cellist Laura Kramer and of Seattle baroque
cellist Juliana Soltis.
What is most interesting is that the Laura Kramer profile
shot was instantly modified to perfection by Becky who simply raised her cello
higher. To me it resembles a profile of an Egyptian queen possibly even
Cleopatra.
Rebecca Wenham has many gigs. She plays for the VSO, for the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and (important to my interests) with Marc Destrube's Microcosmos Quartet. They have been known to play lots of those most difficult Bartok Quartets. We laughed in today's shoot citing the photographs with the ring flash (the second one here) as being Bartokish!
Rebecca Wenham has many gigs. She plays for the VSO, for the Vancouver Opera Orchestra and (important to my interests) with Marc Destrube's Microcosmos Quartet. They have been known to play lots of those most difficult Bartok Quartets. We laughed in today's shoot citing the photographs with the ring flash (the second one here) as being Bartokish!
 |
| Fuji Instant Colour Negative scanned peel. |
