Shots from the 2012 Lakeland Classic are up on the site.
Wannabe stage helpers must write “I will not touch the lights once the prejudging starts” one thousand times before they are allowed to touch the board.
Other than that it was another fine show by Deb Callahan. The venue is small but well maintained and replete with history– just the sort of place I like.
Shots from the 2012 Ancient City, held July 21st in St Augustine, FL, are up on the site.
Lighting at Pedro Menendez is usually outstanding, but in this case someone took it upon themselves to fiddle with the lights just seconds after the prejudging started.
Apply palm to forehead now.
Aside from that, though, the show ran like a clock. A slightly smaller turnout than usual, but I’ve been seeing that across the local shows of late, and I don’t have a good theory as to why.
I thought I had a better angle on the stage than I did, so inconsistencies in the shot white balances are strictly my fault. They used to have some very nice statuary that they’d keep at the back corners of the stage, which did wonders to break up the solid black background.
You know what would be awesome beyond words? (Listen up, Canon and Nikon.) A setting that would allow you to automatically and quickly increment through all (or a preset range of) combinations of shutter speed and aperture (and flash? and white balance? maybe) and add text showing the settings at that time to the shots. Then you could see how the different settings affected that exact scene.
Then you could see how the different settings affected that exact scene.
I mean, I’d love it if my aging Rebel had a automatic pre-set for “combination tungsten stage lights, incandescent hall lights, sometimes LED light bars, all in varying levels as some idiot girl in the control booth is mashing buttons at random, tailored to properly expose varyingly-tan people taking up between 25 to 50% of the frame in front of a backdrop which varies between neutron-star black and trophy gold depending on where the competitor happens to end up on stage.”
But in the meantime it’d be nice to have some tools to experiment with, and to document the results of your experimentation, to see what works and what doesn’t and maybe try some outrageous settings that shoudn’t work but might hold pleasant surpises.
Looks like I will be skipping the Dexter Jackson show this year, because of their insane photographer policy.
Didn’t we already go through this in the early 1980s? Someday, maybe, the sport will be popular enough to turn down free publicity.
We’re not there yet.
I’m extra bummed because I just got the hang of shooting at Lazzara. Ah well. Free weekend for me!
From the Dexter Jackson Classic site:
CAMERAS/VIDEO:
- No video equipment is allowed in the auditorium.
- No professional photography is allowed.
- No soliciting of photo, or video services is allowed on the premises.
- No camera bags, or equipment are allowed in the auditorium.
- Spectators who have purchased a ticket are allowed access to the event with one (1) camera only.
Shots from the 2012 Mid-Florida Muscle Classic, held June 16th in Orlando, FL, are up on the site.
Back at the regular site at Dr Phillips High, Deke put on another great show with over 90 contestants participating.
Shots from the 2012 Gateway Classic and Lake City Championships, held April 21st in Lake City, FL, are up on the site.
Tony Curtis put on another well-run show, and everyone appeared to have a great time.
Shots from the 2012 Orlando Metro, held April 7th in Orlando, FL,are up on the site.
Sorry for the delay, it’s been insanely hectic of late and I’ve also been fighting with my Web host over some RAM restrictions that have been interfering with the normal operation of the site.
The Gateway shots should be up in short order, and I also did a shoot with Peggy Hilbert recently that will provide a nice update to her page.
Just got done entering the info from the official 2012 NPC schedule into the lucas-photo.com searchable database.
I tweaked the input mechanism several times too, so things did go comparatively quickly, but a lot of the information is already slightly out of date, and where the promoters had an active website for 2012 I tracked down additional information that the official page doesn’t have yet.
With the addition of yet another set of classes– Men’s and Women’s Physique– I am envisioning a grid format for both display and input of the information, but more on that when I have a chance to play with it.
Speaking of…
I saw the women’s physique class for the first time at the Orlando Metro show this weekend. While men’s physique has much more of a latent GQ quality about it, women’s physique appears to have the exact format as women’s bodybuilding– presumably the judges are using just using different criteria.
They certainly looked like local-level bodybuilders to me.
Me, I don’t really know what to make of it all. In the short term, the new divisions might increase participation and attendance.
At the same time, though, there’s no question that it’s further diluting the product. (There were zero female bodybuilders in this show. I counted them. Twice).
One has to wonder about the condition of that product when someone gets inspired to slice the cake into still thinner slices. Considering that there are already competitors out there who could successfully cross anywhere from bikini up to physique, or from figure to bodybuilding, what factors are left to differentiate them?
As I said, I don’t really know what to make of it.