May, 2009

I kept quite busy yesterday with photos - and this is probably my favorite time of year in terms of my general mood and attitude toward things. After departing for home to get ready for work after photographing at the AMC Mainstreet Theatre early Friday morning, I went to my usual unrelated place of work, then later trotted about in my motorcar looking for signs of civil dissent wherever I could.

Actually for the sake of truthfulness I had received advanced notice of two demonstrations, one at City Hall against Mark Funkhouser, the mayor of KCMO, and the other being the annual May Day demonstration that happens all around to point out the... shall we say, non-egalitarianism so prevalent in the world. With this lady holding the sign here, she had written on the other side of the sign "Save the Workers, Prosecute the Hedge Funds," something most of us can agree with probably - and I just wish that side of the sign was showing as I kind of find it the more poignant of the two, however I'm posting this particular photo because the overall angle and composition worked out better than the shots I got of the lady with the other side of sign about the hedge funds.

I stopped by the Cinco de Mayo festivities in KC's Westside area yesterday for some shots.

I have observed now that 1/100th of a second isn't fast enough of a shutter speed when capturing dancers (or sports, for that matter).

It felt good to get out among the crowd yesterday - I'm glad I went.

This was at 5:40 am on Friday May 1st, as a line had gathered overnight dressed up as movie characters to snag a year's worth of free movie passes at the grand opening of the new AMC Mainstreet Theatre downtown. It was an interesting time, as I can't say I've ever been hanging around a movie theater with a bunch of other people at about 6 in the morning before. First time for everything eh.

A few weekends back I took care of some Prom pictures for this group of friends, meeting up on the Plaza prior to their heading to that evening's events.

Ever being the evangelist for HDR, that I am, I must yet again point out that in this day and age of digital photography post-processing, HDR is as much a photographer's tool as is something like the various tools and functions in Photoshop, and the cursory edits and alterations afforded by convenient cataloguing programs like Lightroom or Aperture. This prom photo highlights this argument like few other photos I've taken, proving that HDR can be used far beyond the cliched mess that the soulless minions of orthodoxy, and those peddling bad advice based on outmoded experience from the antediluvian days of pre-digital photography like to rant and sneer about concerning the digital revolution in photography.

More on this photo - the background and sky was blown out in the original single RAW, but was recoverable using some adjustments in Lightroom. Then into the Photomatix to spit out a tone mapped image - which of course leaves our three prom-goers here not looking too well.To fix tone-mapping’s mangling of people, I took a copy of the original RAW and simply did some layering and erasing. There was more to it all than that, but what I said sums things up overall.