Ken,
Thanks for your remarks. I'll address them in order.
How are these images used?
This particular image, with the girl on the left being replaced by another pose, will be used about 1.5 inches high in a brochure for recruiting new gifted students. It is designed to be be celebratory to balance the more somber miniature of a string quartet also shown on that page.
The low, heroic angle also seems odd, as if you've shot these to fit a specific design.
I also have the same set taken from the top of a ladder looking down.
The pictures might be used to compose a 15x20 foot canvas banner on the side of the school facing the Walt Disney concert Hall. So looking from below works.
That big soft dish seems to have flattened these subjects. (I often wonder if these big dish reflectors haven't become faddishly overused.)
When photographing a group of young folk, the flattened light is simply more flattering. Pimples and rashes tend to vanish! I use another light, (for as much dimension as I dare) on my upper right, (at 45 degrees down and to their left), and sometimes use the octa from the side.,
(I also use one soft side light which is 8 ft high and one 36x36 box, again to my right and angled 45 degrees to the subject as my usual set up.)
Your distance from the subjects also puzzles me. These are not at all intimate portraits. The students become objects in such scenes.
Explain objectification and shooting distance. At large distances from above, for sure, the people become items. These, however, are shot very close at 5-6 feet max. (My studio length is limiting but I am hopefully moving to my 3rd studio shortly, if I'm favored by luck and good fortune.)
They also are not posed to show any engagement with their instruments. It's as if the instruments are merely props rather than integral parts of the kids' emerging identities.
Separately I'll show them playing. These pictures are a great comic-release to the musicians who identify with the great joy and relief from tension at the end of a great performance that they know they aced and the audience love them for. This is a set of my styling and I'll show more to give an idea of how such images might sometimes work well.
I would have expected portraits of student musicians to be on a darker background, perhaps even with what appears to be an orchestra in the bokeh.
Often that's exactly the case and these are live shots.
In the new studio, I'll have multiple backgrounds. However, these pictures are dropped on to white pages with text.
Perhaps one key light illuminating the face and part of an instrument as the student plays intently.
This is my next stage of work. It requires more individual attention and is the highest form of presentation. It is not easy with limited time, a large work load and groups with a lot of different face structures such as indented European with smooth Asiatic faces and dark skin. Still, this is my ultimate goal and you are absolutely correct that this aesthetic should be explored too. More than one key light will be needed, for sure.
The message being "picture your kid here" at a school where Sissy can concentrate on her future world-class greatness.
Some pictures, Ken, are made to intrigue, amuse, startle, stop folk and get them to turn the page, enter the world we offer and see what it's really about. Then it becomes dead serious as you will see when I share a real brochure constructed in this way.
When the current new concept brochure is printed in final form, I'll post the images and explain my final choices. Also as I prepare the banners, I'll share this work too here with you.
The pictures are taken at one sitting as a group but also individual images are also made. The musicians play seriously and then are posed as shown here, for example for fun shots to enable me to have a library of figures for composing for a myriad of purposes.
Asher
