Thursday, January 13, 2011

C'mon baby, let's do the Twist[er]!

Tonight I was on hand to take some pictures at a local elementary school's Reading Night.  Several hundred kids and parents braved the cold for some food, fun, games and free books.  The girls below are playing a special version of Twister using vocabulary words.

I liked this picture because it captured some of the spirit of the evening, which was enjoyably chaotic.  The motion blur in some of the background elements caused by my slow shutter speed allows the eye to slide by and focus on the girls. 

This photo could definitely be improved in post production by darkening the background elements, desaturating the floor a bit, etc.  But, I'm trying to limit my post work on the pictures here to basic color correction only.  This is for the sake of transparency and to challenge myself to figure out ways to solve problems before I close the shutter, and not after the fact in the digital darkroom.  I certainly don't begrudge anyone their time in post production - I consider it just part of the art and science of photography.  Although I have been gratified to find myself relying less and less upon it as I grow in my abilities.

Back to today's shot.  Unless I am taking a conventional, posed portrait, I try to never shoot from a normal standing position.  You get much more interesting results from getting above or below the normal line of sight of your subject.  The Twister action above would not have been nearly as interesting looking down on it from my eye level of five feet off the ground.  If I had gotten down even lower, the shot probably would have been even better.  More on this topic in a future post.

Canon 5D Mark II
75mm - ISO 1250
1/6s - f/5.0

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