It’s a Sousaphone

OK, I was going to call this blog entry “poor man’s fisheye”, but I decided that everybody knows you can get (admittedly sometimes cliché) wide angles by shooting reflections in the bell of instruments. This was taken in Neyland Stadium at Knoxville.
But I don’t know if everyone out there knows that when you shoot a marching band’s “tubas”, they are more properly called a sousaphone. If you find the bell of the large instrument pointing forward, it’s a sousaphone. If the bell points straight up, it’s most likely a tuba, which is most often used as a concert instrument indoors. Many sousaphones you see in marching bands are made of white fiberglass, and thus reflection photos are impossible with them. The brass instrument, like you see here, is great for reflecting the scene around it.
So when you caption a shot of the “tuba” section in marching bands, call ‘em sousaphones.

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