Year: 2003

Forgive me if this descends into self-satisfaction and self-congratulation today. You takes what you can gets.

Prelude

I went to the dress rehearsal of Borderlands on Thursday night to take some pictures for the Sirens website. It’s currently a little text-heavy and doesn’t have many really good recent photos of the trio, so it seemed a perfect opportunity to remedy that.

Backing up for a second, I should point out that I don’t take a lot of pictures on my digital camera. It comes out two or three times a year, tops, and I’ll usually take a couple of shots and put it away. I’ve had very little success in the past trying to take concert photos in particular… they always seem to come out too dark and/or too grainy, and even The GIMP can’t save them.

My entire knowledge of photography in three paragraphs

I’m always one to experiment (with silicon chip-based items, anyway) so this time I did a couple of things differently: I turned off the flash entirely and relied solely on the stage lighting, I increased the exposure compensation settings (contrary to the camera’s instruction booklet, which suggested they should be decreased), and I set the internal white balance to incandescent lighting. Perhaps most importantly, I made use of the capacity of the 128MB memory card and took over 90 pictures in the four hours I was there; I’ve heard from better photographers that the more pictures you take, the better your chances of having something good.

And what do you know, I actually got well-lit, well-coloured photos that didn’t require editing at all. Score one for the good guys.

Turning off the flash also slowed the automatic shutter speed; the camera only has an ASA/ISO 100 equivalent film speed, which isn’t particularly useful for low-light photography. I’ve got a hand-me-down tripod from my dad, but hadn’t brought it–I find it gets in the way more than anything–so I used the backs of seats to steady my incredibly shaky grip. While this eliminated camera jitter, I discovered afterwards to my dismay that it didn’t do anything for the movement on stage… of those 90-odd pictures, not one doesn’t have a noticeable amount of blur. (Donna in particular is a hard one to photograph in performance… I’ve got shots of the trio where Amber and Jo-Ann are rock-solid, but she’s just this ghostly figure off on the right. Then again, I’ve also got several where Jo-Ann doesn’t have a forearm.) Still, the blurriness isn’t too bad in some of the longer shots from the back of the theatre–only a few of the participants’ faces or hands disappear–so I’ve got some keepers.

44 Feet

I’d taken a lot of standard concert photos–individual and group shots of the performers, from various distances and locations–and in a fit of creativity decided to get a couple that represented some of the more unique aspects of the show. The twenty-something 20-something members of the Project Sing! choir were all barefoot, and so I headed up to the second row to get a picture… of their feet. (Don’t look at me that way. Sheesh, you people have your minds in the gutter.) The picture blurred almost beyond the point of recognition.

I believe that photo is the best I’ve ever taken… and it was a total fluke. I’m not sure if I should be pleased or discouraged.

I sent the full set of pictures to the Sirens that night in case there was something they wanted retaken during the premiere. I also passed a couple of the images on to my parents as a preview of what they were going to see. A couple of hours later I had a note from my parents: they liked Angel Feet, and were looking forward to the performance. Mid-afternoon I checked my e-mail from work and found a message from Sirens… they wanted the picture on the website, right away. Cool.

I met my parents and their friends after work for dinner before we all went to the show. Mom had promised to bring some baking and other things, but she brought a bag into the restaurant and handed it to me as we sat down. Dad had printed a photo-quality copy and she’d framed it just before they left for London. I was more than a little surprised!

Reception

We wound up leaving the restaurant too late to take the bag back to my parents’ van before the show–we took our seats in the Wolf Performance Hall at 8:00pm sharp–so I sat it on my lap during the performance and carried it with me to the reception afterwards.

Over the next hour the performers trickled in to the reception, after changing into civvies, packing up instruments and just letting the experience sink in. Amber was the first Siren to arrive, and I said hi and congratulated her on the show… she was quite thrilled with how it turned out, and with good reason. She asked what was in the bag, so I showed her the framed picture–she hadn’t checked her mail since the day before and hadn’t seen that I’d sent it, but to my delight was just as effusive about it as the others had been. Jo-Ann arrived shortly thereafter and suggested I show it to Louise Fagan, the show’s director and choreographer, and Jennifer Moir, Project Sing’s artistic director, who practically grabbed it out of my hands to show to her group.

Half an hour later, Jennifer came back with a few Project Singers in tow; to my continuing shock, they wanted copies. I’d been talking to Donna, who’d arrived moments earlier, and she’d just told me that the picture was now the desktop image on her computer. Over the next hour probably another third of the group came over to ask if I was the photographer and if they could get copies (to which I obviously responded in the affirmative).

And that’s the story of the ego boost that will last me for the next few months.

Coda

I feel bad that I haven’t talked about Borderlands itself more in this entry; it’s excellent, and I hope it gets the expanded audience it deserves with a full touring schedule in the summer. My opinion is biased, of course, but seems to jibe with recent articles in the local press.