Well sure. I am Dane Mehl, I live in Santa Barbara, CA. I've been playing the ukulele for almost 4 years now, even though at first I was not so motivated, now I can't go a day now without playing. I started with an Oscar Schmidt OU3 which is a concert, and laminate plywood with an incredibly thick coating of gloss, very heavy, and it sounded downright awful. Eventually I bought a Ohana TK 35G, a solid mahogany tenor, and this is when my ukulele playing really started taking off.
I really love this instrument, and this one in particular caters to my creative needs, the sound fits me perfectly. And it truly is a beautiful instrument, the neck is this beautiful creamy peanut butter color with these crack-stripes of brown through it, the fretboard is a dense dark chocolate color and the body is a rich redish brown mahogany color with beautiful grain line pattern.
Not too long ago I installed a Mi-Si acoustic trio pickup in it (I didn't do the best job, and I don't like the Mi-si too much) but with some reverb, I've been able to mask that and experiment with whole new sounds that I could not achieve before.
I know this ukulele to be female, and I finally found a name for her recently. "Lamia", This name is very fitting for the instrument, the name has a very dark background in Greek mythology, and then in Basque lore it is known as a friendly mermaid-type creature. My Lamia can be very beautiful and pretty, and then she can be very dark and mysterious.
This coming Christmas however, I have asked for a Kala Tenor Acacia from my family. Once I have played both of the instruments, I will pick one of them to string low G, and this will broaden my playing. I hope Lamia does not get jealous.
I am a photographer as my main occupation, you can find my website at
www.danemehlphotography.com but I am hoping at some point to do things musically as well, I am currently in the process of researching teachers in my current area, I have not had a teacher yet, and it's coming to the point where I really need to have one.
For this particular photograph, it's a simple trick to make it transparent. You put a camera on a tripod, set the shutter speed to a long duration (the longer the better) I think this was a 30 second exposure, at 15 seconds you reach in a pull the ukulele out as quick as possible, without moving the chair at all. You could do this at shorter speeds as well, but you would probably need to cover your arm with black non-reflective clothing. This way the ukulele was only in the picture for half of it, and then chair has stayed in the same position for the whole duration. You could also do this same effect with multiple exposures, or seperate photographs, and then combine them in photoshop via opacity adjustments and possibly blending modes.
I still have the OU3, but I refuse to sell it to anyone, because I think it would be unjust to sell someone such a crappy instrument, I am considering taking it apart and using the neck to make a cigar box uke or something.
My youtube channel is
www.youtube.com/daneuni
