I was trying my hand at some photography the other day, and happened to get a really interesting shot of the Eb key guard on my new tenor.
Every once in a while, even I can get an artistic shot. Although I’m happy to say, the odds have been in my favour over the last 6 or 7 months, and I’ve been getting more & more of them.
As for the sax that posed for this shot, I will write about it in the next few days… I was just hoping to have a bit more information before I wrote an article about it. Like many of my horns, it is somewhat of an enigma. For now I’ll just say that it’s vintage, German, and quite obscure.
Eb Key Guard by Helen Kahlke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Isn’t digital photography great? It makes the learning curve a LOT cheaper than it was with film. With film, you might shoot a whole roll trying to get one or two perfect shots — I usually had my film processed and only had the most promising shots printed to save money. Now I can take a hundred shots trying to get the perfect one, and not have to develop film or print ANY of them if they aren’t worthy.
I do miss using my Canon A-1, since a full-frame digital SLR is still well over $2,000 (though it used to be $12,000) and there are definite advantages to large sensors and the large, expensive glass that goes with them. It’s more than 98% of shooters need, but I’ve always found an excuse to put myself in the 2% no matter what the endeavor.
That’s not to say you can’t get great pictures with a $200 camera. You can, and it’s worth learning how, because all of those tricks will still work on a $2,000 camera. I don’t think I have to explain that a $2,000 camera is not ten times better than a $200 camera — just as a $2,000 horn is not ten times better than a $200 horn. Every little bit of improvement costs more than the last.