Critique Welcomed Oud Building

[Nihat Iyriboz]

Olympus OM3 with Zuiko 50mm/2.0 macro lens,
Ilford HP5+ @ 1600 with Ilfotech DD-X, handheld

 

[Pete Askew]

I like these very much Nihat, do you have more? The soft lighting really helps one appreciate the shapes and textures of the part-completed oud. And the concentration of the maker as he cuts the screen is nicely evident. Wonderful stuff.

And, nothing to do with Dr Who!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

Very nice in black and white, and a lovely grain. Reminds me of my time in Istanbul. Thanks, Nihat.

 

[Paul Lange]

Really nice, I can only echo what has been said already. What are these things? They look like giant woodlice.

 

[Beth Carter]

love the first one, very abstract.

 

[Hamish Gill]

Really lovely! Very nice tone to them! Hp5 and ddx is a good thing!

 

[Rob MacKillop]

The oud or ud is a musical instrument, a bit like a lute or guitar. They can be very beautiful objects, capable of incredible nuances in sound. Consider that in 'western' music we have 12 notes in one octave (A Asharp B C, etc) while in Turkish music there are 53 notes in the octave! Unbelievably, that number is a reduction from over 120 notes in the octave. I believe there was a conference in the 1920s which decided to reduce the number of notes so that western ears could tolerate the music more readily.

This is the guy I studied with, Necati Celik - a genius:

[video=youtube_share;Vk6XynSrJQM]http://youtu.be/Vk6XynSrJQM[/video]


Can you tell us something about this oud maker, Nihat?

 

[Chris Dodkin]

Fascinating, Nihat and Rob - The tones in that first image are really wonderful

Nihat - how do you go about your initial metering?

 

[Nihat Iyriboz]

Than you very much, Pete. I was visiting Ege University in İzmir where they have a division of musical instrument building. I was looking to purchase an oud for my son who was preparing for his college guitar degree in California. So, most of the focus was on selecting the instrument and conversations with the people at the department.

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I dug these out thinking your facinating musical journey in learning the oud. Thanks, Rob.

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Thanks, Beth. I do too.

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Thanks Hamish. I agree, this combination's grain structure and the contrast in indoor low light still impress me.

 

[Nihat Iyriboz]

Thank you, Paul.

 

[Nihat Iyriboz]

My friend from the '70s who was the dean of the music school at the time helped me in this project. This place is part of the university system. He also knew a good independent builder who fixed the flamenco guitar I dropped on that trip. This'd be a good connection to partially remedy your loss, Rob. Thanks for sharing this video.

 

[Nihat Iyriboz]

Thank you very much, Chris.

Olympus OM3 and 4T I use, both have pretty consistent and complex combination identical spot metering system. These were done in 2008, when I had not started large format yet, and was using zone system metering only with Mamiya 7. For Olympus metering, I used more intuitive and based on mid-tones approach, and developed accordingly.

Though, I have the urge to go back to the days I used no light meter and pre-focused based on DOF and was able to photograph pretty nicely with my Kodak Retina IIc. I switched to working with a hand held light meter in England in 1980. It's like having a calculator from Japan and stop calculating in your mind. Our brains are so capable, yet so adaptable...