Just watched a documentary on the best way to fasten iron girders together. It was riveting.
Shots from the 2015 Lakeland Classic are up on the site.
I love this little lakefront theater because of what’s outside; one of these days I’m going to get there really early and do a shoot. Inside the lighting is a challenge, but I had some new tools with me to help.
In borderline lighting, it’s often quite easy to miss minor motion blur using the camera’s tiny viewer. Using a rock hammock for the tripod to hold my laptop, this time I shot tethered using a Linux program called Entangle to grab and display each shot, including histogram and data, almost as soon as I took it.
Practical upshot, I was able to push the margin way further than I normally would, and get feedback right away as to whether I’d gone too far. I still had a few misses, but far fewer than normal at this venue. Someday maybe I’ll win the lottery and drop a couple grand on a really fast telephoto, but until then this helps me squeeze more out of what I have.
The show itself was well-run and the competition was good. If I had one comment for the competitors, it would be this: Do all your homework. The judges go to a lot of extra time and effort to put on a series of posing and judging seminars throughout the year. The seminars are not expensive and what you learn is invaluable. They’re put on for your benefit: use them.
Enjoy the shots. Next up: Gainesville, one of my favorite shows (and no travel).
I mixed my anti-pasta with my linguini and my dinner imploded.
Shots from the 2015 Ancient City show are up on the site.
Unusually, the lighting was a bit off for the prejudging; that led to a lot of shadows on the shots, especially on the left side of the stage. I was shooting from near the sound booth which mitigated the lighting difference across the stage somewhat, but it was still noticeable.
(I wonder if portable equipment would be powerful enough to remedy such situations? If so someone should definitely look into having such equipment on hand. One never knows when lighting could go bad, even during the show.)
I was able to compensate for a lot of the issues, though I’d still love for someone to develop a wireless foot-pedal to replicate the main dial for fast-changing light levels. The battery pack already presumes you’ll shoot at a 90 degree angle and so adds a second main dial, which implies that it should be straightforward to add a wireless control to that.
Enough rambling. Enjoy the shots.
I know a guy who can, with a single hammer tap, break a piece of granite exactly in half . I know that sounds counter-intuitive.
Shots from the 2015 Suncoast are up on the site.
Due to unavoidable schedule conflicts, I won’t be able to make the Tampa Bay or Central District shows. So when my schedule unexpectedly freed up for the day of this show, I jumped at the chance– Jefferson High has some of the best lighting of all the venues I’ve been to.
There was an obstruction in the middle of my usual seat of choice, so I had to sit a little closer than I have been of late. This was both good and bad; being closer I got great color and a nice hint of bokeh on some of the closeups. On the minus side, the sharper angle revealed greater variations in contrast due to a competitor’s postition on the stage, I had to shoot around people in front of me, and with the signage on the stage I could forget about trying to hide the parallax in the composition. :)
The level of competition was excellent, though I had to discard most of the bikini rear shots because there was just– how do I say this gracefully?– too much southern exposure. That aspect of bikini class has gotten out of control and frankly the NPC should have stepped in to correct it two seasons ago. Other than that, though, I was very impressed.
This was the show’s second year and I think it will be around for years to come. Enjoy the shots.