So what happened?

Last my faithful readers knew, I was heading into a 3 day weekend of workshop photography for a local theatre company that I've worked with before. Green Fools are amazing people, and the workshop participants are just as amazing.

So amazing that I clicked the shutter 11,836 times. Of course in the fast pace of shooting amazing action there's going to be a few out of focus, or of nothing at all. I am amazed that that number is as low as it is, particularly for the shots in special dim lighting. 

I ended up with just under 11,000 photos to look at. But first is getting them into the computer so I can actually work with them. Normally this means inserting the SD card into the slot, waiting a few seconds, and pressing the import button. But when there's thousands of photos involved, things go a little slower. A lot slower. Our computers are amazing, but that's a  lot of data shuffling. I ended up cleaning up a bit, which was overdue, to make space on the internal drive. Then day three I was forced to import to an external (slower) drive. It ended up being 331.5 GB of photos, plus an unknown amount of space for Lightroom's database metadata. 

We agreed on roughly how many photos they needed, broken up into about a dozen different events. From there it was paging through and selecting. A peculiar thing happens when I'm shooting events. I see the event through the lens, but even more specifically, I'm seeing (or trying to see) the exact point of focus to make sure it's on a person's head. For this, the rest of the frame can be whatever it is. In many cases, what I see in the photo is new to me. I can usually tell what I intended to shoot because of where it is in the frame, but what's happening elsewhere is new to me. The look on someone's face, what's happening with a prop, the overall impact of the scene, all made for some delightful moments as I reviewed.

My event philosophy is to shoot lots, knowing that some are out of focus, or are of nothing, or are terrible shots that nobody should see. But I'd rather shoot 100 photos, lose 10% off the top, have a bunch of ordinary photos, a dozen or two good photos, and one spectacular photo, than shoot 50 photos, lose none off the top, get a dozen good photos, but miss the spectacular one.

The photos from much of the third day astonished me. They were performing in special coloured lighting with the main lights off, meaning it was dark. I cranked up the ISO a bit, opened the lens wide (f1.8) and picked a fairly slow shutter speed. Going through the first few photos while they finished getting dressed and setting up confirmed it was going to be fabulous. And it was. This is as good as it gets holding a camera.

Just to amuse you, the folder names are Abyss, Circus, Crux and the Great Chicken War, Moonrocket, Poetry, Funeral, Wedding. There's a few other folders, but those names aren't nearly so much fun.

I know you're dying to see the photos, but Green Fools gets priority. Once they've got theirs and we've confirmed sharing rules, I'll show you what I can. No, I'm not going to show you 11,000 photos.

In the mean time it's been raining buckets, so this was a good several days to be indoors. However the lawn is a jungle, and I need to sharpen the mower blades while it drys out.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Landscape

Film (35mm Ektar 100)

Michelle (35mm Superia 200)