Miss Mount Ephrain Pagent

[savona]

Wow, I have a new found respect for anyone who shoots events. This was VERY hard. The terrible and almost non existent lighting, the people bumping into you, jockey for a good spot, and not to mention 1,000 people asking you questions. :) AND THIS WAS ONLY MISS MOUNT EPHRAIM! :) lol

Anyway, after some PP I got this... Any tips would be greatly appreciated!






BTW, this was just done as a favor to my friends sister (the one center stage) so no real pressure.

[Adaptive]

Let me guess. 5D + 70-200 (shot at 200mm, f/2.8 or 3.5, 1/50sec, ISO probably 800 or 1000) Can't really tell ISO, I can't see the amount of grain because of the small image size. But seeing the shadow from the flash, I'm sure you were probably shooting at 800ISO and compensating with flash. A bracket could help with eliminating shadows, and you're lucky you don't have any red eye in this pic. Usually using flash with a long lens you get red eye city.




Just looking at this pic reminded me of a time back in the day when I shot some low budget fashion show for $100 (desperate times) and it was suuuuper ghetto. This other photographer dood who was shooting for free brought 2 alienbees lights and set them up and was blasting an ridiculous amount of light at these girls and basically blinding people. (place was pretty dark). Anyways I saw one or two of his shots and they were pretty much horrible because as the models come forward the lighting changes with every step so he had really un-consistant lighting for each model walking up the catwalk. I pointed this out to him and he said "Oh I'll just fix it in photoshop because I'm shooting raw" haha good god, more work than it's worth.

For example when they start at the base of the catwalk maybe they will be properly exposed but as they got towards the end where we were they would be totally blown out because he didn't know how to adjust as the models walked down the strip. Oh wells

Sorry to go off topic, just taking a trip down mammary lane.

[savona]

Your almost on for the EXIF! I think I was around 1000 ISO but more like 5.6, most were shot at 200mm because I couldn't get too close (the seating was setup kind of silly). Anyway it was a fun experience and it was only as a favor to this girl so there was no pressure.


How would you have handled it differently?

[Adaptive]

Wow at 200mm you could have easily dropped down to 3.5 and lightened up your pics a good bit and kept your subject in focus.. Of corse you would have a nice DOF like you do now.

I probably wouldnt have done any different. If you had remote speedlites placed in different areas you could have got some different lighting, but since you're not shooting for the pagent that is out of the question.

I donno, I think you did a good job. You can't really control the background by getting the other girls out of the pic, and you probably could have taken some pics closer up. But showing some background is good too because it shows that she is on the runway. For a spectator I bet you got better pics than any of the others.

For my taste the subject is a tad dark and should be lightened up a tad, that's the only critique I have. If I were you I would have stuck around till most of the guest departed then played around with her on the stage getting different angles and stuff, might have been fun.

=)

[brettc9146]

nice work.....