playing with curves

{click on image to see better}

this piano once sat {or is it stood?} in my parents' home. now it resides in my twin sister's living room. i just now realized, everyone in my family of seven except for my father played {or still plays} the piano in some fashion. it's not that my dad was not musical. he was. but he played the trumpet. still, he loved the piano and had great appreciation for those who could play. he loved jazz pianists, marian mcpartland and oscar peterson. his favorite classical pianist was vladimir horowitz. his all-time favorite pianist was my mom. and i think he was very proud of his five kids' playing, as well as his granddaughter's.

i have fond memories of my dad playing trumpet while my mom played the piano in our home or at church. we almost always had a piano in the houses i grew up in. sometimes an upright, sometimes a console, and sometimes baby grands like this one.

my mom did not have room for this one in her new place after my dad died. so my twin sister took it, and it is perfect for the large, open corner of her living room. i'm so glad she has it. the last couple of times i was there, she was playing it while i sat in the guest room on the laptop. it brought me back to a very long time ago when all seven of us were together and my siblings and i would fight for a chance to sit at the bench and push down those ivories to make music. i also think of the times that all seven of us gathered around the piano to sing––whether at christmas or to practice for the song we were to sing at church on sunday or just for fun. good, good times.

trust me––my family was not perfect. so very far from it. but i would say that the strongest unifying cord between us––beside our faith––was music. i believe it is why it is still such a great love for each of the five children as adults. and of course, it continues to flow from my mother who is still writing music and still playing the piano, even after her partner has gone.

although i love the shape and the curves in the body of a baby grand piano, the title of this post actually came from something else. the interesting look that i achieved with this photo was arrived at by opening it in photoshop and playing with the curves. instead of doing a normal s-curve, i curved it way outside the norm, and sort of "blew out" the background until i got a really neat look that i liked.

this was not something i set out to do. it's something i achieved by playing around. it does not work with just any image––i know because i tried. but it happened to work well with the background and foreground of this shot. maybe it's not for everyone's taste, but i liked what i saw.

did you grow up in a musical family? was there a central spot for you where this music took place? was there a specific instrument or instruments that were/are special to your family? and if not music, was there some other pastime that was a sort of glue? i'd love to hear some about it.

and now, to end this post––an inside joke for any of my family members that are reading this... "here we are by the piano."