My wife Janice belongs to the early music ensemble Sine Nomine, and last night they put on a concert of 14th century music at St. Thomas’ Church in Toronto. I had a chance to take a couple of images with the Hipstamatic: one of some of the instruments used, and the other of the Bapistry at the back of the church.
Last night I was at a concert put on by Sine Nomine, a Toronto-based early music ensemble (of which my wife is a member). In addition to recording the concert, I decided to do some photography of the group warming up and decided to go “old school” by shooting Polaroid. In retrospect I wish I’d brought a flash as the venue was not very bright. I ended up shooting 1/30 second, wide open @ f4.7, even with Fuji FP3000B film with an ISO of 3200. Pictured in the image is Randall, who in addition to being a musician and scholar is also an enthusiastic advocate of traditional film.
Another in my Portrait of the Artist series today: Randell Rosenfield is a founding member of the Toronto-based early music enable Sine Nomine. My wife is a also a member of this group, and in addition to recording their Christmas concert last Saturday night, I was also able to take pictures of Sine Nomine as they warmed up and got in final rehearsal for the concert. In this image Randell is playing a vielle, a forerunner of the violin.
From a technical point of view, it was a challenging shoot. I was using a Nikon FM film camera with a 50mm f1.4 lens. I was shooting sans flash, so even using Kodak Tri-X film pushed to E.I. 1600, I had to shoot at 1/30 of a second, wide open. Because of the slow shutter speed, I had to time my shoots to coincide with the short pause at the end of each upbow or down bow, in an attempt to avoid blur. I am quite happy with the results; there is a luminosity in black and white film that is just not there in digital black and white.
And of course, when taking images of a group that performs medieval music, using a digital camera would have felt wrong. 🙂
My Third Eye 