A flamenco virtuoso: Daniele Bonaviri

This is another photo I took at the same concert where I also photographed the accordion and violin duo about that I wrote about in my previous post and in this case, too, I have made the same mistake of caring more about photography than the music.

This shot features Daniele Bonaviri, one of Italy’s most talented flamenco tocaores, opening the second part of the concert. He played in trio with another flamenco guitarist, Monica De Luca and Stefano Rapone, a classic guitar player.

Taking this one has more been challenging than shooting the photo of the two musicians who played in the first part of the concert. Classical and, like in this case, flamenco guitar players are very hard to photograph as they stand essentially still while seated, thus, the main goal is to capture a moment in which the internal expressiveness surfaces.

Another issue to consider is how cluttered is the stage. When there is the liberty to move around and chose a better vantage point this is often not a serious problem. But when seated in a specific place without the possibility to move and having to care also about the surrounding people, taking a meaningful photo becomes problematic. In this case, I managed to frame the musicians properly, but the square crop of the photo reveals the compromises I had to make to achieve something viable.

At the end of the day — it was already night, actually — I got a few decent shots but, as said, I have missed the music I was there to listen. One should never say never, but I think that I am not going to take this kind of photos anymore if not on assignment.