Australia Fair Street Organ

Playing old-time favorites including Along The Road To Gundagai, Jingle Bells, Memories Are Made Of This and many other at Canberra Floriade every year since 1992 is this magnificent and grand instrument. It is known as one of the largest and finest outdoor auto pipe organs that ever came to Australia. The 73 key Concert Street Organ was built in 1992 by following the original 19th century design by Johnny Verbeeck in Belgium, the organ manufacturer with the family history and traditions of organ making going back to 1884. Some of the organs back in those days were operated by organ grinder turning a big handle that activated the blower and card feed mechanism. The modern ones are commonly using a belt drive and a small motor with a battery. The instrument is played mechanically by passing the book music with perforated holes representing notes through the reader. That allows pipe valves to open whenever a hole passes by and to produce a sound. That is a fantastic instrument which I hope to see and hear again.

In this HDR I combined the original background with tone-mapped front which in my opinion gave the picture a bit more realism and put the focus on the street organ. The 3 shots were taken from the tripod set on a low level. There were a lot of people nearby with children coming closer to touch the instrument and tourists like me taking hundreds of pictures. However, I was lucky enough to wait till the right moment and have few shots with no one in the frame. I have few more photographs of it from the back including one with the owner demonstrating a book music which I will hopefully process and upload sometime later.

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