Guitar Isolated
Jan 15th, 2008 by jeremy
This morning I was asked by a family friend to come down to the local college and take photos of her dance performance. I typically enjoy being asked to photo events like this because it challenges me to take photos in less than desirable lighting conditions. Most simple performances have little thought or budget put into lighting.
As seems also to be typical, when I showed up at 8:30 and perused the program for my subject, she was in the last performance of the show. Great. Actually I try to stay positive at times like this because I can use the time to try and grab other photos simply for the fun of it, and hopefully find things artistic or interesting to snap. The lighting was extremely dark, so I needed every bit of the 2.8 aperture my lens could offer and 1600 ISO that my 40D gratefully provided with minimal noise.
I have a few others from the show I plan on posting, but this first one was one of my favorites. The guitar makes it seem like more of a concert photo, but this was one aspect of the overall performance. Honestly this particular performance was laughable on many levels; one of those students trying to be creative but just end up being really weird kind of performances. There were several interesting shots I was able to isolate and capture out of it though.
Canon 40D, 70-200L, 1/60 at f/2.8 and 1600 ISO
see on flickr
Jeremy, this shot is wonderful! I have been envisioning something very similar with my husband and his 1974 Strat, but we never seem to be in the right mood at the same time to do the set-up. Maybe when I show him this one, he’ll finally agree to let me set up the strobes while he’s fiddling around in the music room. Such fine resolution for ISO 1600. Or is this typical of hte 40D?
Thanks for the comment Judy. I was happy to get this shot in such a difficult lighting situation. The 40D really does quite well at 1600, though there is noise present when things are this dark. A little de-noising in Photoshop along with the downsizing to web resolution definitely help though.