Interior Challenge

In the last couple of weeks I have been out to visit both the Reid Musical Instrument Museum and St. Cecilia’s Music Hall to document the buildings prior to a makeover.

The Reid is a particularly challenging location for a photographer: tight spaces with mixed lighting and tall glass cabinets lining the walls and centre of the room. Reflections everywhere. It turns out that this was not a good day to wear my new white top!

After de-cluttering the room as much as possible and squeezing the camera as far into the corner as I could, I fitted a polarising filter to the wide angle lens to minimise the reflections, set the camera onto the self-timer and ran away to hide well out of the shot.

St. Cecilia’s was more about emphasising the fine architectural details, symmetry and elegance of the oldest Concert Hall in Scotland. However, once again the lighting created some challenges- here I had to shade the camera lens to prevent the spotlights creating unwanted lens flare.

More about the Musical Instrument Museums can be found here

http://www.stcecilias.ed.ac.uk/about.html

http://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/information-services/library-museum-gallery/museums-and-galleries/musical-instrument-museums/see

Susan Pettigrew, Photographer