THe Bigger PicTure

One of the joys of owning a guitar, apart from the obvious one of making music, is the tactile nature of the instrument. How it feels in the hand, how it looks and, on older guitars, all the little marks and indicators that this is a working instrument. It’s almost as though good music has to be coaxed out of it and maybe good art always leaves a scar or two as well.

All this is ably brought out in the excellent photos – and especially the close-ups – that feature in Guitarist every month. The quality really is superb. So how do you do it? For those of us who want to take similar pictures of our own instruments, what are the secrets? What cameras, lenses and lighting do your photographers use? And can you pass on any hints and tips that can help us capture in close-up all the little idiosyncrasies that make our own instruments unique and that will show them off to their best advantage? For buyers and sellers, such detailed information is invaluable. For keepers, what better way to record what our instruments look like and be able to pore over their detail even when we can’t get our hands on them? Such a record may even prove helpful to our insurers if a loved one goes missing! Andy Couchman via email All the photographs you see in Guitarist are taken by a crack team of highly talented professional photographers in our own dedicated facility. The lighting setups are well beyond our understanding from a technical point of view, but we can assure you that they’re extremely complex and not something that could be easily replicated in the average domestic environment. All of this, of course, is not much help as far as answering your question is concerned and, for that, we apologise. A quick suggestion would be to invest in a few photography magazines or perhaps employ the services of a professional to capture your treasured instruments for posterity.