Beth playing her violin in the snow.
First things first. Yes, see really is a real concert violinist. Yes, she really is playing the violin.
Why is she doing this out in the snow? Good question.
It all started at a Graceland University Christmas concert. I was taking pictures for the local newspaper.
After the concert she was visiting with concertgoers and I showed her this photo and asked of she would like me to email it to her. She said yes. Then she said, I could use some portraits of my playing the violin. Are you interested in doing that. Of course I was. We decided to make plans after the winter break.
I asked her to send me portraits of violinists that she liked so I would have an idea what she had in mind. She sent me a number of images including professional violinists out in the snow. I wrote back and asked if she wanted to shoot in the snow, and she said yes. So we waited for the first snow storm. When it arrived the wind was howling but we went out anyway.
Conditions were not the best, but we kept at it.
Beth Presler playing a violin in a snow storm in the country northwest of Lamoni Iowa.
Our best images were in a sheltered area.
We decided we should try this again on a less windy day. It was after the second snow storm that we created the image in a red dress, a personal favorite.
I should add one more thing. On our first shoot out in the howling wind we had a memorable “incident”. I describe it here. We don’t always shoot in snowy weather. See the links below.
Links