2012 marked the 13th year for the Blue Plum Festival in Johnson City, Tennessee. For me, it was my first time attending, thanks to a little arm twisting from a friend.

Bill Bryant, a photographer I met on last year’s Worldwide Photo Walk, called me a couple of months ago and asked if I would be interested in being a “Gallery Photographer” for the Blue Plum. He was awarded the honor of orchestrating a team of area photographers to capture all the events of the festival. He would then pool together all the images for use in future Blue Plum promotions. It really caught me off guard to be offered such an endeavor, so naturally, I was a little reluctant. But Bill seems to be the type that rarely takes “no” for an answer. He assured me I would be a perfect fit for the mix, and that one of my local photography inspirations Chris Duncan and his equally talented brother Roger, would be participating as well (I think he knew that the opportunity to shoot with Chris again would hook me). He told me I would also need to bring some prints down to the Gallery to make available for public viewing and sales. Sales? I laughed and reminded him that I do not have, or desire a “business” in photography, therefor there was no need in me having gallery space. Furthermore, I would have to check my schedule to see if I would even be able to get away from work to attend. He accepted that, but asked if he could forward all the information for me to read over anyway. I agreed.

Once I read all the information, and checked that I was available to attend the festival. I sent him a message that I was on board. I knew that he, and Chris would be there, but I had no clue who else would be working the festival with us. It wasn’t until I arrived at the gallery, that I saw the work of all the other photographers. Of course I saw Chris’s stuff. A truly amazing body of work. The man does everything, Weddings, Landscapes, Wildlife, you name it. He has photographed in all 50 states and all 7 continents. If you love photography, please visit his site here. He is an incredible photographer, and an even better friend. Next to Chris was Rebecca Marr. I have followed Rebecca’s work for sometime. She is one of the best family photographers in the Tri-Cities. So of course, once she arrived, I was quick to introduce myself. You know, since I am the primary family photographer of Emily and Ella Barr. She was very kind and has the personality that matches her work, a truly beautiful soul. I was even able to shoot a couple of stages with her and chat a bit. She giggled and said she was out of her realm, and this was her chance to just enjoy taking pictures, “no stress”, she said. I knew she was “sand bagging” a bit, and her images from the festival told the truth. She rocked it, and her attention to detail was a lesson to me. I love this image. I am always caught up in getting the image of the rock star commanding his instrument. It never really dawned on me to take just a closer look at the beauty in the details, something Rebecca easily crossed over from her professional work.

Another photographer with his eyes on detail was Jay Huron. This was my first time metting Jay, so naturally I was not familiar with his work. But his ability to capture the spirit of the Blue Plum was impressive. His stealthy ability to simply capture people enjoying the festival truly gives you the feel Blue Plum offers, and then his aerial shots, at day and then dusk are awesome.

If having the opportunity to shoot some cool performances wasn’t enough, the ability to meet and spend the weekend with so many talented photographers from the area, and talk “shop”, was for me, like being a kid in a candy store. I mention the two previous photographers and include links, simply because of the catalog of images they have uploaded from Blue Plum to facebook, but there were so many other photographers. Tom Netherland, a well known freelance writer in the music industry. Mark Anthony, a very talented wedding photographer in the area. Nathan Mays, a photographer I met last year who’s photography has already landed him commercial work in different industries just in the past few months. These are just a few of the dozen or so photographers Bill assembled for the Blue Plum, whose work you will see soon as the organizers look to use our body of work to promote Blue Plum 2013 in the next few months. I am extremely thankful for having the opportunity to be a part of this, and I look forward to next year’s Blue Plum Festival. Whether it be a “Festival Photographer” or just simply a guest, I’ll be there, with my camera in tow.

Now for my images, as usual you can click on the thumbnails for a larger image in a lightbox, either in the post above or in the gallery below. And as always, thanks for visiting.

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This year marks Emily’s 7th recital with Gay Whitt School of Dance. Once again Mrs. Gay allowed me to photograph during their dress rehearsal, she has strict rules about flash photography during the recital, so I grab all I can at the rehearsal. The girls have come so far, and looking back I can see my photography has improved as well.

Looking through some of these, I am reminded of the first images I took of some of these girls a few years ago. It’s nice to see all of them are growing up in to fine, talented,  young ladies, and I look forward to each May to capture their continued success. With each year it seems we lose one or two for different reasons, but we also continue to make new friends along the way as well. These pictures are some of our oldest friends along with our newest in dance. Enjoy, and as always, thanks for visiting.

With the beautiful warm weather upon us now, we finally get to go outside and enjoy some bubbles…

With these pictures, I have realized just how fast our baby is growing up. Time flies so fast. It seems like it was just yesterday we were chasing bubbles with Emily at this age…

We love our music.

It seems there is music going constantly in our house. Even Ella has had a love for music from day one. It doesn’t matter what kind it is, just the beat I guess sends her legs and arms moving. Emily could be the driving force in that. She has always loved music, and blows my mind how quickly she can learn the words to a song. It plays on our TV, her iPod, Youtube, or she has me go search Spotify,  just to hear and share the latest song that I should purchase for her on iTunes. It just reminds me of how much I loved music at her age too. Of course now they only need to purchase a digital song file once and hear it in its pristine state over and over, back in my day, I could wear out a cassete tape in one summer. I think I purchased three Van Halen “1984″ tapes due to high amounts of play/rewind. Sadly, Emily prefers Maroon 5 over Van Halen. But she does like some Journey. I will continue to work with her on that. At least she hasn’t shown the signs of “Bieber Fever”.

For these pictures I wanted to try something with my light grids. I got them a few months ago and just now found time to play with them. I shot these with a 12 degree grid on my Elinchrom Ranger, With my Nikon D700 set at f5.6, 1/250 of a second, and shot at 100mm on the 80-200mm f2.8 lens. This made for the spotlight look with the light falling off quickly to black. Cool stuff… I think I will use these grids more often. I also liked the focal point of 100mm too, makes me look forward to the 85mm f1.4… Whenever I can find one back in stock. As for post processing, this is just a cross process on the color in photoshop, and the vignette is from the grid at capture. I am still playing with cross processing a bit, kind of a vintage 70′s look I guess, something different anyway. It was done back in the day by processing negative film in positive (slide) chemicals or vise versa, producing the color cast. Vintage processing seems to be the rage with apps like instagram, and I thought it would look cool with the big headphones, wall of CD’s and obvious dancing. What a Diva, who knows what she was listening to…

And as always, thanks for stopping by and checking out my latest captures and thoughts.

On October 2nd, I participated in another great Worldwide Photo Walk. This year, the event hosted over 1,100 walks with over 28,000 photographers around the world. I chose Bristol Virginia, where I followed Walk Leader Chris Duncan and about 25 other walkers around State Street in Bristol TN/VA. I hadn’t really toured around State Street much in the past, so this was a nice way to see the area.

The first photograph was captured right before sunset. A fellow walker, Bill Bryant, was having a conversation with an older gentleman on the sidewalk. I noticed this, because the gentleman had a face like I have wanted to photograph for sometime. One with lines that told many stories. While most of the other walkers, myself included, were trying to capture something special in the landscape with their camera, Bill yelled out to everyone that if we would like to grab a different kind of portrait, that this man has a special talent he is willing to share with us for a photograph. You could tell it was a trick that he has perfected well over his many years. He would wave his hand kindly over his face and turn his eyelids inside out. It was a trick I had seen a few times when I was a kid on the playground years ago, but he was quick and smooth with it. Freaky I know, but everyone happily clicked away at it. He was very friendly, and went on to tell his story that he did this when he was younger, to keep his eyes open to study. Because of this, he said he has damaged his eyes a bit. But, it was a trick for conversation, and if it wasn’t for the trick, I would not have had the opportunity for this capture. I hesitated at first even going over there, photographing strangers still feels awkward to me, even if I do have their permission. I am so glad I did though. Like I said, this is a photograph, and post process I have been looking to try for some time. It was just him at pause during the conversation with another walker, with of course his eyelids at their “normal” position. I could have quit shooting then. I was so happy to have had the opportunity to capture this. Once everyone got their photographs, we let him go on his way. I thanked him for his portrait, he smiled and said “your welcome”. After reviewing all the photos from the walk, this is still my favorite capture of the night. For this photograph I used my Nikon D700 and Nikon 80-200 f2.8 AF-S lens at 200mm, 1/320, f2.8, ISO 400.

The Bristol sign was a photograph that another walker, Nathan Mays, had pointed out to us. He had shot it before, and it was well received, so he was kind enough to share it with us. When we started the walk around 5:15, we went up State Street a bit, then started hitting some back roads taking in all the structures of the old town. The Historic Post Office, old rail passenger cars along Volunteer Parkway, some ducks by a creek, the Emmanuel Episcopal Church, beautiful military monuments, and many other things. Since Nathan wanted us to try and get back to the State Street sign at the old train station in time to capture it at sunset, a few of us skipped some of the other sights. We headed toward the sign once Nathan felt the sunset was right. And I am glad we did, the beautiful colors of the golden sun blending with the blue of the sky at day’s end, made for the perfect backdrop. Sometimes it’s hard to capture what your eye truly sees in a photograph, but I am happy with my results. I haven’t caught a sunset like this much, but this will go in my file as one of my favorites. D700 and 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S lens at 60mm, 1/5000, f5.6, ISO 400.

My final image was one of my last photographs of the evening, the Paramount. With a beautiful evening, the luminescent street lights, fluorescent sign, and the streaks of break lights on passing cars. We all gathered to capture our shot of the Paramount. I snapped a few of this scene trying to find the perfect mix, wanting to capture the blue of the sky as a backdrop to all the lights. I guess I was here for 45 minutes, snapping the shutter, waiting for the sun to fall further and bringing more of the night sky in. This was my last capture at the Paramount, I was happy with it once I viewed it on the back of my camera. I figured I wouldn’t be able to do much better at that location, and everyone was heading toward Machiavelli’s for the after walk meet. So I packed up and moved on with the rest of the walkers. D700 and 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S lens at 29mm, 10 seconds, f11, ISO200, B+W ND .9 filter.

I decided I would head back to the train station to load my gear in the Jeep, then drive back to Machiavelli’s. As I was about to cross the street, I decided to grab one more picture of the State Street sign fully illuminated. This was my last shot of the day, just a quick grab, but made a nice image for my feature photo in the header. For this shot I used the D700 and 24-70mm f2.8 AF-S lens at 50mm, 3 seconds, f10, ISO 200.

At Machiavelli’s we had a back room where Chris, our Walk Leader, had a projector set up showing a slide show of some of his impressive work he has gathered from all over the world. He had many wonderful stories and images to go along with them. We all ate and enjoyed each others company talking shop and such, then Chris started sharing some helpful hints on cleaning lenses and digital sensors. Great instruction I think all in attendance took notice of.

This was my second walk, but I am already looking forward to another next year. I recommend it to anyone who has a love for photography. These walks have all different skill levels from beginner to pro, and I saw camera’s from your average point and shoot, all the way to pro model body and lenes. Everyone was sharing freely their thoughts, knowledge, and pointers, and I think everyone in some sense left a better photographer. Many thanks to Chris and Nathan for guiding us on this walk, and especially a thank you to Scott Kelby for dreaming up this gig 4 years ago.

We just got home from our vacation on Atlantic Beach. I have to blame Christy for this one, she picked out this destination in March. We had talked for years about going to the outer banks, and Emily has been begging to go to the beach for a couple of years now. So this week long get away was perfect.

We were a little unsure as to how Ella would travel at just a year old, for a 7 and half hour trek. But she really did well. Of course that 7 and a half hour trip quickly turned in to 9 hours, but that’s ok too. Once we arrived we quickly unloaded the car and headed to the beach. None of us knew what to expect once Ella got to the beach, Emily was not a fan her first time. But Ella loved it. She began to scream as soon as she saw the waves crash in. She also laughed as the water came over her feet with the tide, it was all a perfect first experience for her.

I looked at the surrounding area on google maps before we ever left home, and knew we had a pier next to the Inn we were staying at. So of course, I had to attempt an early morning sunrise picture. I had never tried sunrise photography before so I was excited, but really wanted to nail a shot too. I was very happy with what I got. The first one to your left was take before the sunrise, at around 5:30. It was a 35 second exposure at 17mm, f11. With a longer exposure the sky reflected on the sand which caused the blue cast, with the white balance set for the incandescent lights on the pier so that the wood would be correct. Of course with the long exposure the waves blurred together to make for the soft look of the water. The one in the header above, was taken once the sun had rose a bit at 5:55, 1/6 of a second at 24mm and f11. I think that is my favorite of the two. The colors were beautiful, and I am very happy with the captures.

By the third day we were ready to head out in hopes to see the Wild Spanish Mustangs of Shackleford Banks. These horses are descendants of Spanish horses that landed there from a Spanish shipwreck hundreds of years ago. They offer a glimpse in to how wild horses survived before they were domesticated. They survive completely on what they find on the nine mile island. They dig holes in the sand some 3 feet deep for fresh water. They are protected by the state and the only thing man does for these horses is vaccinations to further protect them. There are over 100 horses on this island. They truly are a thing of beauty and I was so caught up in seeing them, I didn’t really pay much attention to my camera, so I only got a couple of shots, this one at a little wider angle to show the number we saw on the beach. The ferry we were traveling in also offers service for a drop off on the island, but with no shelter and no shade, it would prove to be a rough couple of hours on a 1 year old. So we elected to just view the horses from a distance, and perhaps visit the island again once Ella is older.

After the stop at Shackleford, we were on our way to Cape Lookout. We didn’t think there would be much to offer on the island other than a tour of the lighthouse, and some searching for seashells along the beach. So we had the ferry scheduled to come back for us in a couple of hours. That was a huge mistake. We could have easily spent a full day at Cape Lookout. The lighthouse is beautiful and the history is grand. We all enjoyed our visit, and Emily accidentally learned some stuff on her summer break by interviewing a Ranger as part of her Junior Ranger requirements. Emily and I also climbed the 207 steps to the top of the lighthouse which reveled a beautiful panoramic view to us. It didn’t take us but about 5 minutes to climb to the top, and that was with stops at every window to feel the cool breeze flowing in. Emily said it was the highlight of the trip.

Christy wanted a family portrait taken here, so we had to scout out a spot quickly to make our scheduled tour. It was around 11:15 when I started taking the pictures. So the sun was harsh, but we did the best we could. I set up the camera and framed my shot, then set the timer to go off in 20 seconds. Seemed easy enough, but with the sun glaring down on us, the 90 degree heat, and a baby that got understandably fussy with a little too much exposure. I only got a chance at 2 shots. Also, it’s hard to look cool and refreshed when you are pouring the sweat. So this portrait is the best I got. It is not the best in the world, but it’s us at a National Landmark… A great capture to document our visit for our National Parks scrapbook.

Once we left Cape Lookout, it was on to Fort Macon. We stopped by the evening before to kind of just scout around, and check the hours of operation in hopes of see a reenactment. Unfortunately none were scheduled. But, what we did see excited us enough to definitely come back for a grander tour. The Fort is a beautiful park, hard to believe there was so much beauty in a place built for war. But the lines, the grounds, the glowing green grass against the brick, and the American flag flying above it on a white pole was truly just a thing of beauty. Emily wanted to cover every square inch of it, and I believe we did. If anything I think it has sparked her curiosity more in visiting our National and State Parks. I think, thats a pretty cool thing and I look forward to our next adventure together.

Once again thanks for visiting and reading my wasted space on the web.

Now that summer is in full swing, I like to get out in the coolness of the forest and look for waterfalls, or Geocaches. We didn’t get to go out much last year with Ella’s arrival, but we plan to go more this year. I found this falls a couple of years ago with the help from the Waterfalls list at Tennessee Landforms. But every time we went back to photograph it, the gate was closed. As luck would have it, yesterday was the perfect day for us to go. The trail isn’t too bad, but it brings you out at the top of the falls. You will have to navigate down a steep trail to the bottom, but it’s pretty good with plenty of Laurels in ideal locations for hand holds as you hike down to the bottom pool. As always, keep your eye on the little ones. Emily did fine going down, but with pine needles, and loose dirt, it could become slippery. It really is just a short hike from the fire road, so all ages should enjoy the hike.

I recently purchased a Sekonic L-758DR light meter and loaded calibrated profiles for the D700 with each of my lenses. To get this shot, I took a meter reading for the ambiant, then spot metered the highlights and shadow areas of the scene. I know that I have 6 1/4 stops of Dynamic Range with my camera and lens combo from the calibration process, so I found a point where I could keep detail in the shadows, and not blow my highlights too bad. Once I got the capture, I then took it to Lightroom for quick edits and cataloging, then to Photoshop for the heavy edits in pulling out the details in the shadows. Using layer mask along the way, I kept the midtones and highlights in check, but brought out the detail in the rocks to show the moss and sharp edges. Just as the old guys would do in film days with dodging and burning in the darkroom, some images aren’t complete until after postproduction.

I think I am on the right path with visualizing the results using various meter readings before pressing the shutter. In some cases, I am just manually doing what a good matrix or evaluative meter is doing. But with this process, I know exactly what I am up against before pressing the shutter and looking for blinking highlights. I will also know where my shadows are so I can keep detail in them, instead of going pure black. I like the image I got using this method. I believe it has plenty of contrast, and replicates the scene well. In the past I have tried High Dynamic Range with waterfalls and got “ok” results, as seen with this 5 frame HDR of Laurel Falls off Dennis Cove in Carter County. But with the constant flow of water, it brings a breeze to the low lying limbs and leaves. The lite breeze causes ghosting with 3 frames, let alone 7 or 9, for the HDR process. Personally, I would rather have movement blur, over the ghosting, it drives me mad in post! I still like HDR for some captures though. But for waterfalls, I think I will continue to just use a single image. I hope with this practice, my photography will become more deliberate rather than luck, with pre-visualizing the print before the capture. I’ll keep working at it, but still, a little luck never hurts…

As always, thanks for reading, and see you soon.

Capture Info: Nikon D700 and 17-35mm f2.8 AF-S, Really Right Stuff ballhead, Gitzo carbon tripod, shot at 17mm but cropped to around 35 in post, ISO 200, 2 seconds, at f20.

One of my favorite subjects to photograph has always been live bands. I tend to just stay local, Johnson City or Bristol, Tennessee, but there are some pretty cool venues to work with. These images were shot at Capone’s in Johnson City. Capone’s really has the stage dialed in for great sound and lighting. The lighting is a huge help for someone like me who is just trying to get some cool photographs of his friends and artist playing live. I mostly use only ambiant light and keep the flash down as to keep with the feel of the performance, but that introduces other problems with color cast, and trying to get an acceptable skin tone. With the color cast, we could always revert to black and white… but what’s the fun in that!

I started photographing bands with film in 2002. I used a Nikon F100 and ISO 400 film, I even got my hands on some ISO 800 on occasion. I found out right away that in this type of low light photography, fast glass was a must. I started with one of Nikon’s first AF-S lenses the 28-70mm f2.8, then moved to the 80-200mm f2.8 once I could afford it. That became the go to lens for live performance. I could easily frame a good exposure of the guys on front, like the lead singer, guitarist, or bassist, at 80mm, then zoom to 200mm and grab the drummer. I would load my camera bag with 8 to 10 rolls of Kodak 400/24 exposure then head to the gig. I would note my exposures to a tablet, and shoot full manual as to keep everything constant. That way when I had the negatives pulled, I would know what was working, and what was not, once I scanned them into my computer with a film scanner. I always shoot at the widest possible aperture to allow as much light in as possible, and set the shutter speed to the slowest speed possible so that I can hand hold. Trust me, that’s hard to do at 200mm f2.8 in complete calmness, add loud music, and a drunk dude bumping and yelling “dude, that’s a nice camera, take my picture” next to you, and well… that handhold at 1/30th is out of the question… Once the images were in the computer, I had to go to Photoshop. The one thing you learn real quick in live bar band photography is the reds from the house lights are intense, add Kodak daylight film and it seems to double. (When I first started, I didn’t know differances in film except slide and print, let alone where to get different films “cheap”.) So yes, photoshop was a must. I could see right away why most live photography was shot in black and white, no color cast to worry with…

With photoshop I would make sure the image was sharp enough to work with, then I would duplicate and convert the image to Lab mode (Lightness, a channel, b channel). I would always sharpen in the lightness channel, then try to take care of the overwhelming color cast in the color channels a and b. I would then send the file back to RGB for crop and publish to jpg. The ones I would consider were few, but I got lucky sometimes.

Once Digital SLR’s really started to gain some ground, I finally set my F100 down and got a Nikon D70s. It was a good step in to digital, but I never felt it was a worthy replacement for my film based camera. I desperately tried to make it work, but once you got above 400 ISO, the image was just trash. I got some pretty good images, shot some promo’s with the D70, but really for live performances, it was a non performer…

Then came the D700, this camera was made for high ISO low light photography. With the D700, I was able to pull shot after shot at 3200 ISO, and under the right conditions 6400 ISO. Perfect for low light live performance. This has been my current set up for a few gigs now in the last 3 years. And so far, the D700 along with my f2.8 zooms, have yet to fail me on getting cool shots in low light.

I now have some new strobes, pocket wizards, and clamps that I might use in an upcoming show to act as spots mixed in with the color lights. That will help in the flesh tones, and add a little pop to the artist, while still keeping the colorful ambiant light in the background. I look forward to doing this soon. But for right now, enjoy some of my shots from Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit.

Oh one more thing… Here is my first Rock Star shot, it is of a friend of mine, Scott Harrell of Spank from back in 2002. Shot with my trusty Nikon F100, 28-70mm f.2.8 and Kodak 200 speed film. Once I got the prints from this gig, I knew I was hooked on live band photography. As always thanks for reading.

I don’t mean to seem “trendy” with my photography, but sometimes the image just calls for certain things. A chair in the middle of a field? Most have seen these types of photographs, I have seen many myself. Why is that chair in the field? Why is that girl sitting in it? Would it not be better in the shade? What does it mean??? But this field, and this chair, are anchors for the image I wanted to create today. So, let me explain.

Today was the 5th anniversary of my mothers passing. Although Ella will never meet her grandmother on this earth, I hope she learns through me, her sister, and others, who she was. This rocking chair was my mothers when she was a child, and my family has held on to it for close to 60 years. It is Ella’s now, and while my mother will never hold Ella, her favorite rocker will.

After Ella was born, Christy and I wanted to make special Thank You cards for all the shower gifts we had received. It was a beautiful day, we had a pretty flower growing in our garden, a soft blanket, and a basket from friends as shower gifts. So with all these accessories on hand, and an open field next to the house, we thought why not take a “trendy” baby in a basket, with a huge flower on her head picture for the custom Thank You cards? Why it was brilliant! Everyone loved the cards. I mean who doesn’t love a naked baby in a basket?

That brings us to today’s picture. Ella will be 1 in a couple of weeks. So with my busy schedule, I have been looking for a day that the girls and I can be together and work on Ella’s 1 year photograph. I wanted to use the field by our house again. The field is an anchor, a common, easily accessible place for what’s becoming her yearly photographs.

As for the rocking chair. Ella had just discovered her grandmothers rocking chair a couple of weeks ago. She loves to rock in it, as soon as she hits the seat, back and forth she goes. So with remembering my mother today, I felt we could use her chair as another anchor. A way to tie her with the event, and create a memorable image for Ella’s 1st year photograph. I think mom would be pleased. I am sure she would have giggled at the whole fiasco. And believe me, that’s what taking pictures of Ella is right now, a fiasco. But, that’s life as a father I guess. Luckily my girls just have a way of softening the edges and bringing a smile to some of the hardest things I have to deal with. I guess most kids can do that for their parents, it’s amazing how the smallest of hands can pull us out of the deepest, darkest holes.

This years photograph of Ella may be weak on its own to some. With all it’s trendiness, I mean why would a baby be sitting in a upholstered rocker in the middle of a field? And the trendy cross-processing… But as with a lot of my images I work to create, there is an underlining story. A story not for you as the reader perhaps. But for my daughter. This one is for her.

Rocking Chair camera info: D700, 80-200mm AF-S @ 1/100 sec, f3.5, 80mm, ISO 200, Elinchrom Ranger AS with 39″ Deep Octa fired with pocket wizards.

Basket camera info: D700, 80-200mm AF-S @ 1/80 sec, f8.0, 200mm, 1 stop trigrip diffusion panel to cut the suns harshness.

Once again we are back to Seeger Chapel for the 2011 Dance Recital. I was happy with Emily’s performance in the rehearsal, but she really pulled it out in the recital. She even looked forward to the audience! Of course, I guess all the dancers were looking at the overly excited 11 month old in the 3rd row, next to me…

Mrs. Gay, of Gay Whitt School of Dance, allows parents to photograph the rehearsal every year, in hopes to keep the flash distractions on Recital night to a minimum. The lighting in Seeger Chapel at Milligan College, is really something to be desired. And I being one who can’t handle on camera flash too well, have tried everything. I have done high ISO, fast apertures, slow speeds, and tripods, with nothing but inconsistant results (the front lights of the stage burn brighter than the lights on the back line). This year Mrs. Gay allowed me two hot shoe flashes on stands and two umbrella’s. With that, I think I have finally figured it out.

I placed each flash on the front corners of the stage with their umbrella’s, and metered the two lines Mrs. Gay and Mrs. Robyn had placed for the dancers marks. I was getting f3.2 on the front line and f2.8 on the back at ISO 800, and 1/200 sec., with about a 60/40 to a 50/50 flash to ambient reading, with the two SB28′s firing at half power. Since the ambient was incandescent, I gelled the two flashes with full cut CTO’s to achieve proper white balance in mixed light. I then shot a grey card for an in camera custom white balance. After six years, I think I have finally got the chapel figured out. All my thanks to Mrs. Gay for letting me place the light stands. The above image was shot at 1/200, f2.8, 165mm, at ISO 800, with my D700 and 80-200mm lens. Flash was triggered with 3 Pocket Wizards. I already look forward to next year, I may even attempt to capture a flying ballerina! Now that would be awesome!

Pictured is of course Emily in the navy blue, and our friends Bailey in pink, and Rachel in light blue. The ballerina feet in the header picture are the junior ballerinas, I really look forward to Emily reaching that level.