Facade - Part One

The curtain has come down for the last time on the latest production by the Choeur Vives Voix, Facade.  The same can be said for my rather long editing process.  When last we last spoke about the show, I mentioned how I had made my way home with a little bit over 1400 photographs of the show.  I kind of thought that the number was high, especially since during the show I tried to be more selective.  Based on past experience, I knew that the scenes where the light was very low would result in zero photographs, unless the actors were not moving at all.  So, I cut back in what I shot at those moments, trying to focus more on the scenes that were brightly lit by the spotlights.  I went back into my archives and discovered that I had been a little more choosy that I had in the past.  For the Romeo vs Juliette show from last year (Part One & Part Two) I came home with over 1800 photographs.  Yeah, 400 less photographs to go through!  I really enjoyed my experience shooting the show this year.  Last year I had that little episode where I filled my memory card to almost capacity, which resulted in some well documented problems when I got home and tried to transfer the photographs to my computer.  In order to prevent that from happening this year, I decided to use two different memory cards for the show.  One card for the first part, and then at intermission I switched in a second card.  Lesson learned and another heart attack avoided.  I was also disappointed with some of the shots that I ended up missing last year because I just couldn't get enough shutter speed to freeze the action in the low light.  My camera only goes up to ISO 1600, but last summer while spending some quality time with camera's user guide, I learned that my camera had an Enhanced ISO function.  Essentially, it meant that my camera could actually go up to ISO 3200.  This gave me a little more shutter speed, but I found that the shots had a bit more noise (kind of static that you notice in parts of the photograph) than the photos that I took at ISO 1600.  I kind of switched back and forth a bit during the show.  I figured it would be a good exercise to work on my finger speed, which it was.  I also generally took all of the shots at f/2.8, except for one.  That would be the third photograph you see in this group.  A little while before the show, I had read a blog post from my friend Pierre, explaining how to get star shapes in your photos.  I was already aware of this technique while shooting at night, but had never thought about doing it during a show.  There was one scene where an actor was singing a solo and he had a bright spotlight on him.  I figured that this was the ideal time to do a little experimentation.  I knelt down to a point where I was right in line with the spotlight, keeping the actor between us.  Going all the way to f/16 wasn't possible, but by using my quick fingers, I was able to see that shooting at f/8 was going to give me a fast enough speed to shoot without worrying about having any excess blur in the image.  There's a little bit of noise due to the high ISO, but I really like the way that the light falls on his hat and shoulders.  Not to mention, up there in that top right hand corner, the spotlight with a star effect on it.  I was so happy when I pressed the 'Play' button on my camera after taking the shot and seeing the result show up my screen.  I couldn't wait to get back home and see it in a larger format on my computer.  I also had to quickly focus on what was happening on the stage because the first half of the show wasn't finished yet.  The stage had a second level to it, so I also tried to take lots of depth of field shots where I'd have the one actor who was on the stage in focus, while having the second actor who was on the second level be out of focus, but still be in the photograph.  I really like those kinds of shots as I find them more interesting than just one actor with an empty background behind them.  I also tried to get shots of as many of the actors as possible, which wasn't really that hard of a task thanks to the many large musical numbers that happened over the course of the show.  Unlike myself, these people actually enjoy seeing themselves in photographs so I aim to please by getting as many of them as possible into my photographs.  Time to get a little technical, for those of you who enjoy it.  The first photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/60sec, ISO 1600 at 24mm.  The second photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/80sec, ISO 3200 at 24mm.  The third photograph that we previously discussed was taken at f/8, 1/50sec, ISO 3200 at 35mm.  The fourth photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/250sec, ISO 3200 at 24mm and the final photograph was taken at f/2.8, 1/80sec, ISO 3200 at 32mm.  The curtain finally dropped to signal the end of Act One and as I said earlier, I quickly switched my memory card and took a couple of moments to catch my breath.  I guess this is a good time to do the same now, but I'll be back with a few more pictures from the second half of the show in Part Two.  I guess you could say that this post is To Be Continued....