Rebirth of top photographers

Chapter 269 The corpse of the piano (with color)

Hawaii, Ryuichi Sakamoto's home.

Chen Pingsheng is discussing with Sakamoto Ryuichi about the cover shooting of the new album.

Huang Liao was walking around Mr. Sakamoto's house and wandering around.

The decoration style here is very fashionable and avant-garde. The walls are made of gray stone bricks and are all distressed. The beams use a lot of dark brown wood structure, and the furniture uses light colors.

The entire room is well integrated with nature, and the distant coastline can be seen through the large windows.

Huang Liao feels that this house is more like an exhibition of the residence of a historical celebrity than a personal residence.

After visiting the house, she looked at everything except the master bedroom and other places.

When she walked into the living room, she happened to hear Chen Pingsheng and Chen Pingsheng discussing the creative inspiration for the cover.

"Mr. Sakamoto, are words like malfunction and wear and tear what you want to express in the new album?"

"Oh, yes, that's right." Ryuichi Sakamoto held his knees with both hands and fell towards the sofa: "Since I got cancer, I have been thinking about the relationship between music and the body, malfunctions, the human body will malfunction, and the instrument itself It will also malfunction.”

"So I hope to show the sound after the malfunction, and I have worked hard on this." Sakamoto Ryuichi said.

"I see." Chen Pingsheng nodded and continued: "Then I think the photo itself can also reflect this sense of malfunction, for example using noise."

"Oh, yes, the noise is very good. It feels like snowflakes, but it is electronic snowflakes. It actually represents a sound, the sound of a malfunction." Ryu Sakamoto nodded and agreed with Chen Pingsheng.

"Then let me think about it first, Mr. Sakamoto." Chen Pingsheng pondered, thinking about how to give this cover the desired glitchy feel.

"Okay, no rush." ​​Sakamoto Ryuichi smiled, then got up and went to the work room.

When the crisp rhythm and soft tone of the piano sounded, Chen Pingsheng woke up from his meditation. He looked at Huang Liao sitting beside him, stood up, and looked at the furnishings in the room.

"Do you have any ideas?" Huang Liao followed him and asked.

"Not yet." Chen Pingsheng listened to the music and looked at the various hanging paintings in the room. They all seemed to be made by famous artists.

Then he walked outside the workshop where Ryuichi Sakamoto was, and he could be seen bending over, playing the piano with abandon, as if looking for musical inspiration.

Chen Pingsheng felt that this state was worth taking a photo, so he took out his camera from his backpack.

"Click." The slight sound of the shutter was covered by the sound of the piano, just like the small notes were covered by the huge accompaniment.

Chen Pingsheng suddenly had some inspiration. The piano... seemed to be an element on the cover.

No, it's not a concrete display, but an abstract one. Although there will be no piano elements in the picture, you can think of the piano as long as you see the cover.

Perhaps a combination of black and white keys would be a good choice.

Chen Pingsheng felt that he had grasped the key to the cover.

"Help me find some pots of green plants." He said to Huang Polygonum, and then the two of them began to search for suitable potted plants throughout the house.

Not long after, seven pots of green plants were arranged on the floor, from large to small, from high to low.

Chen Pingsheng arranged them vertically in the order of one large and one small, but after seeing the finished product, he felt that it was a little too rigid and lacked spirituality.

"Chen, are you looking for inspiration?" Sakamoto Ryuichi suddenly walked out and saw these potted plants.

"Yes, I want to find the feeling of a piano, which is more abstract black and white keys, with a corresponding order." Chen Pingsheng explained.

"I see." Sakamoto Ryuichi held his hands in his arms and thought for a moment, then said, "Then I think it would be better if it was tilted a little, because it would give the movement of the notes."

"Pah." Chen Pingsheng snapped his fingers: "That's it."

Having already had a complete idea, he immediately rearranged the potted plants on the ground. On the left side, there was a row of slanted green plants, one large and one small in order.On the right side are three pots of green plants placed vertically.

"It's still a little short, help me find two larger pots of green plants." Chen Pingsheng said, and then continued to adjust the details.

Sakamoto Ryuichi looked at his busy work, and then looked at the green plants, feeling that they were like musical notes, which had started beating without human beings noticing.

"Bang." Huang Liao moved two more pots.

"That's enough, thank you." Chen Pingsheng placed one pot on the far left and the other on the top.

Then he gestured to a rectangular window with his hands, and looked at the overall composition through this window.

"No problem." Chen Pingsheng took out his camera and said, "It's time to light."

It was still two o'clock in the afternoon, and the sun was just right, so the lighting was not difficult. Instead, it needed to cover up some sunlight.

Chen Pingsheng set up the tripod, pointed the camera lens at the potted plants, and pressed the shutter.

"Mr. Sakamoto, come and take a look."

Ryuichi Sakamoto came over, held his chin with his hand, stared at it for a while and said, "It feels very quiet..."

"Yes." Chen Pingsheng deliberately dimmed the ambient light, and combined with the reflected green of the floor, there was an illusion of a plant space.

"But that's not all." He took out his computer, imported the photos, and started post-production work.

For this photo, the most critical aspect lies in post-production troubleshooting.

Chen Pingsheng first tried noise, but found that it was not suitable, so he changed several fault modes to make photos.

In the end, he gave Ryuichi Sakamoto a total of three photos. One was a glitch in the snowflake screen, one was a stripe glitch caused by stretching the right side, and one was a copy glitch caused by repeated collage.

After Ryuichi Sakamoto saw these three photos, he immediately fell into thinking, as if he was weighing which photo was more in line with the feeling he wanted.

"Chen, this is really a difficult multiple-choice question." He smiled: "I think every photo is very good. The combination of nature and failure is the feeling I want."

"So can you give me some advice?"

Chen Pingsheng thought for a while and replied: "Personally, I don't think the snowflake screen fits well, although its malfunction is the most obvious..."

"Yes, Snowflake is more like electronic music, but my album doesn't have much electronic music. The third repetitive feeling doesn't go well with the music. There is only the second one." Sakamoto Ryuichi made a decision: "This Zhang is more suitable for music, it looks like a glitch of notes, and the plants are arranged according to the black and white keys, one corresponding to the other.”

"Thank you for your hard work, I'm very satisfied." He expressed his gratitude to Chen Pingsheng with a smile.

"It's nothing, Mr. Sakamoto."

The album cover was finalized without any twists and turns. Chen Pingsheng felt that working with Ryuichi Sakamoto was really smooth.

Rather than professionalism, he requires more feeling.

What Chen Pingsheng is better at is also feeling.

The two can easily agree on the shooting style and are undoubtedly the best collaborators.

After staying in Hawaii for two days, the three of them went to New York.

It was still at Sakamoto Ryuichi's home, but this time they were not shooting an album, but a photo shoot.To be precise, it is a portrait of a piano.

"This is my first time taking pictures of a piano." In the warm yellow room, Chen Pingsheng looked at Ryuichi Sakamoto sitting in front of the piano.

"This is not an ordinary piano." Sakamoto Ryuichi replied, and then he began to tell Chen Pingsheng the story inside.

"Actually, this piano has gone through a lot, and when I talk about it, it feels... ahhhh... very heartbreaking." Ryuichi Sakamoto grabbed his collar buttons with his hands and imitated the expression of heartache: "It has experienced After the tsunami, the sound quality of the piano has been lost, and it is difficult to play.”

"No, this is no longer usable. This is a dead piano. This is what many people say about it."

Sakamoto Ryuichi paused for a while, and then said: "The one who passed away, died by drowning, my feeling is the corpse of a piano."

He smiled and said again: "But now when I listen to that voice again, I feel there is something moving about it."

"Maybe it's because I've been sick myself, maybe."

There seemed to be a glimmer of memory flowing through his eyes.

Chen Pingsheng and Huang Liao sat across from each other quietly, listening to him talk about his views on the piano: "After the industrial revolution, it is the first time that humans can make this kind of instrument."

He stroked the piano: "The combination of these strings adds a lot of power."

“Convert materials that originally exist in nature into artifacts using human industrial technology, or the power of civilization.”

"These substances in nature are struggling desperately to return to their most primitive state."

He raised his hands and imitated the movements of the waves: "The tsunami rushed over in an instant, bringing the piano back to its natural state of consciousness."

"Now I hear the sound of nature, and I think the sound of this tsunami piano, which has been tuned by nature, is very beautiful."

"So that's it, I understand." Chen Pingsheng nodded in agreement with Ryuichi Sakamoto's idea. This is the understanding between the creators.

For artists, everything has its own meaning and role.

Even a piano that has been soaked by the tsunami and cannot play normal tone still has its own unique beauty.

In Ryuichi Sakamoto's view, this piano is a work of art that returns to nature, which is very consistent with his musical philosophy.

Therefore, when Chen Pingsheng photographed it, he did not adopt an overly unique composition.

The main subject of the picture is always the piano, its keys, its appearance, and its interior.

Chen Pingsheng tried his best to get rid of the photographer's personal ideas and used the simplest shooting method and the most natural light and shadow to restore the beauty of the piano.

For this reason, he didn't even use lights, relying entirely on natural light.

In order to take photos that best fit his impression, he also hired a few masters to push the piano out of the door and into the nearby woods.

Because it was winter, the woods seemed a little deserted, with only a few lonely leaves swaying in the breeze.

But this fits exactly what Chen Pingsheng wants. The piano washed away by the tsunami is among the woods. Ryuichi Sakamoto is standing next to the piano, holding his glasses in his hands, surrounded by endless woods.

It was as if he had broken into a forbidden area and found this dead piano.

"Crack!"

Chen Pingsheng took several more photos one after another, all of which were of Ryuichi Sakamoto and the piano.

Such as playing, such as repairing.

After the piano was moved back, Chen Pingsheng took another picture of the woods without the piano and a picture of the traces of the piano on the ground.

Ryuichi Sakamoto held the camera and was full of praise for these photos.

"It's really beautiful, Chen. It's a natural beauty." He felt very satisfied.

However, Chen Pingsheng felt that this was not enough: "I will stay for a few more days, Mr. Sakamoto. I want to capture all the textures and gloss of the piano in the sun at different moments, that is, within 24 hours. I think such photos are more suitable. The vitality it once had.”

"It's like... giving the piano a grand funeral. That's how it feels."

Sakamoto Ryuichi looked at Chen Pingsheng: "Funeral, yes, humans need funerals to commemorate, and naturally they also need funerals."

As he spoke, he seemed to have caught some inspiration, returned to the workroom, and began to adjust his music.

Chen Pingsheng and Huang Liao stood behind him, listening to his musical ideas and watching his movements.

"I have recorded a lot of sounds in the past few years, including the sound of rain, wind, and the noise of the streets." Ryuichi Sakamoto turned the buttons on the debugging table: "There are also natural sounds. I also collected a lot of them."

"In the woods, tie radio equipment to trees or to the legs of birds. You will find that the sounds they bring back are very unexpected."

Ryuichi Sakamoto opened the software, adjusted the reverb, and then started playing.

Chen Pingsheng first heard the sound of a cat meowing, then the sound of rain, mixed with the sound of wind and shouts. However, after being processed, these sounds were distorted and sounded empty and ethereal.

After listening for a moment, Sakamoto Ryuichi paused the music and continued to adjust.

"The sound of the tsunami piano is also among them." As he spoke, he played another piece.

A slightly strange but pleasant sound came from the speaker. Sakamoto Ryuichi raised his hand as if playing a piano, pressing the keys in the air, and then took a sip of water and praised: "This sound is really good."

At this moment, he was radiant, and even his white hair could not stop him from being "young" in music.

"The natural sound of a tsunami piano..." Ryuichi Sakamoto used the keyboard to jump back and forth on the music-making software. Notes kept appearing and disappearing.

Only then can they see their unparalleled talent and taste.

At dinner time, Sakamoto Ryuichi took them to a restaurant he often frequented, where both meat and vegetarian dishes could be served.

He has never eaten meat since he fell ill, and he has stopped eating even protein. Chen Pingsheng can't say that his choice is wrong, because it is the other person's right.

As long as he does not impose his will on others, he can make whatever choice he makes.

Ryuichi Sakamoto was exactly like this. Although he was a vegetarian, he did not require Chen Pingsheng and Chen Pingsheng to also be vegetarian.

So the food on both sides is red and the other is green, clearly distinguishing each other.

"Mr. Sakamoto, when will your album be released?" Chen Pingsheng asked during the meal break.

"The album will be released soon, probably in two or three months." Sakamoto Ryuichi replied.

"Well, then I must listen to your work as soon as possible."

"Haha, I will give you one when the time comes."

"Really? Thank you."

"You're welcome, let's just say it's to thank you for taking the photo of Tsunami Piano."

(End of this chapter)