This is my third real exploration of both my renewed interest in photography and my new camera, my Panasonic Lummix GF1. I had a great time, and it was very gracious of Yoko to invite me to the benefit and show me around.
Photographically speaking there were a few big lessons. First, hold the damn camera steady! I ruined a number of shots this way. I think part of it is my nervousness about shooting people in the crowd. I felt perfectly comfortable shooting the performers, but felt very shy about shooting random people attending. (Despite the fact that nobody seemed to mind, and a number of people actively vamped for the camera. Of course, that's a completely separate problem, as I'm trying to get slice-of-life photos, not posed shots.)
The second lesson was bump up my ISO. I shot at ISO 800, and didn't go
higher because I was concerned about graininess. I'll definitely have to
experiment with higher-ISO shots to see if that gets me the higher
shutter-speed I need without getting too grainy. Here's the first real
example of the problem that I decided to keep:
This one kills me. It's the beautiful and talented Sunny Soriano and her partner. This is exactly the type of photo I'm trying to take -- capturing something like the peak of action. And it's blurry as hell, not because of the extreme speed of the performers, but because I had too slow a shutter speed, and too shaky a hand.
There were about five artists painting live, doing works that were going to be raffled off at the benefit. (I didn't win anything.) This is Ceci Castelblanco:
I love this shot of Ceci. Something about dark, painterly tones really gets
me. I didn't get any shots of the fire performers that I really loved, but I like how
the pose for one aerialist worked out. He's hanging by a strap around
the back of his
head!
All in all it was a blast, and I'm really glad I went. I hope there's an equally interesting photography adventure this coming weekend!
Here's the full gallery for this event.