Marina Hasselberg - That Foolproof Muse
Saturday, July 14, 2018
As a working commercial photographer I rarely made mistakes
or had a situation where I would go back to Vancouver Magazine, and other magazines to tell them
that the big fish had gotten away. The reason is that I had two of everything
in my studio or on assignment. As a photographer I was aware of Patterson’s Law
that stipulated that Murphy was an optimist.
Now in the waning days of my life when I work in my little
Kits studio I trip over cords and have a hard time finding stuff. I keep two
flashlights so that I can look into my Mamiya lens to adjust the f-stop.
Anybody watching me in action would use that that wonderful
word shmuck to describe me.
Yesterday the indomitable and glamorous cello player Marina Hasselberg posed for me. The reason is that I had requested her to come over as my previously good shots (see here) were suddenly out of date as right after I took them she went for a severe Marlon Brando as a peroxide SS Officer in The Young Lions.
The idea that a musician should look calming and boring is an item of the past century. Perhaps in that past century Pinchas Zukerman changed that idea by posing in a jean jacket which is the cover of his fine rendition of Hadyn's Symphony 21 (my fave).
Hasselberg cannot be pinned down for doing this, or that in our Vancouver musical scene. She uses a baroque cello (no end pin) a modern cello and often she plugs it in to pedals and amplifiers.
Thus I do not know of any musician in this city who has the power to inspire not only with her music but with her look and presence.
I managed (with her around it is impossible to fail) to take many wonderful photographs until I indicated to her that I wanted to use my ring flash. This was a total disaster as the two-prong flash cord very quickly failed and it was impossible to make the unit flash. And I had no Plan-B. I was disappointed. We celebrated with a spritzy ice cold Argentine rosé.
This morning I looked at all those black rectangles of
pictures that represented the ring flash failure.
But behold! I tweaked here and there and the result amply
proves that some accidents happen for good reasons.
