Thursday Salute to Originals: Musical Architecture
A photography project shines light on the stunning, complex structures within musical instruments.
With a 20-year career touring with orchestras across the globe, cellist Charles Brooks has a unique appreciation for the inner workings of musical instruments.
Brooks’ fascination comes to a crescendo in his ongoing photography series Architecture in Music — a scoping photography project that takes a close look inside the construction of pianos, winds, brass, and stringed instruments.
“[I used a] minimum aperture of just f/14, which means you need a tremendous amount of light. It also has a very shallow depth of field at that aperture, less than a centimeter when you’re focusing close to the lens,” said Brooks in an interview with This is Colossal.
Up close, the careful designs of each music-maker rival the architectural beauty of concert halls. Beams of light pour into the hollow chambers that modify sound waves to produce pitch.
Flip through enough close-up pictures, and you may begin to recognize markings from old repairs in a grand piano or the organic trenches of a didgeridoo interior.
This Thursday, we’re saluting Charles Brooks’s photography series featuring the interior of musical instruments. You can view more photos like these on his Instagram.
Sources: Charles Brooks, This is Colossal