Photo Shoot: Listen with your eyes

Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times
·2 min read

Listen with your eyes. This expression is open for interpretation. But often refers to a mindful way to pay attention. It is also a good photo aid, better images from engaged listening.

The All-Cape and Islands Music Festival is a great place to practice. This event annually gathers the best high school musicians together, forming an orchestra, band, mixed chorus and treble chorus. This year, over 250 students arrived at Barnstable High School on Feb. 1 for three days of rehearsals followed by an afternoon concert.

It is always hard to know where to start as the groups rehearse throughout the school’s music rooms and two auditoriums. I arrived Saturday morning for the final practice before the afternoon performance. The directors had the students well-rehearsed and were fine-tuning the nuances of their songs. This involved repetitive work, playing one section repeatedly, looking for just the right sound.

Barnstable High's Mary Steinhilber reflects up her seatmate Jaclyn Valencia from Bourne playing their euphomiums in the band at the All Cape and Islands Music Festival at Barnstable High School. The musicians were running through some tricky passages in composter David Maslanka's "Illumination Overture for Band."
Barnstable High's Mary Steinhilber reflects up her seatmate Jaclyn Valencia from Bourne playing their euphomiums in the band at the All Cape and Islands Music Festival at Barnstable High School. The musicians were running through some tricky passages in composter David Maslanka's "Illumination Overture for Band."

Listening became more important than seeing at this point, watching and hearing. As a photographer, faces are a key component in most storytelling images. There is an old expression from the manual focus days: “Get the eyes in focus, and you are 90% there for a good photo.” It's still true today, but the autofocus assist is always welcome.

As the finer points of the musical scores were discussed and practiced, I repositioned and took time to look from the back of the practice hall as the students refined some of the trickier sections.

Watching all this musical mastery is fascinating. As a former high school band student — alto saxophone — the one thing I always dreaded was playing soft passages. There is nothing like playing your heart out on John Phillip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” march in a large band, everyone in sync, making beautiful music together. But when the music went soft and slow with only a couple of instruments playing, mistakes were easy to spot, and there was nowhere to hide.

The treble chorus worked through sections of Brahms' Die Meere, singing the German words. I was afraid to trip the shutter it was so still. The delicate song required a lot of attention to perform, their voices didn’t need to be loud to be strong, they just needed to be in unison. The world could use a lot of softer voices these days, coming together in harmony.

Steve Heaslip is the Times chief photographer. Contact him at sheaslip@capecodonline.com or follow him on X and Instagram: @cctphoto.

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This article originally appeared on Cape Cod Times: Steve Heaslip: Listen with your eyes to make better photos