HS Pageant - Feedback Please

mjhoward

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For me, photography has been a hobby that I enjoy but havn't been able to devote as much time to as I'd like. Last weekend I was able to shoot a High School pageant that my sister-in-law was a participant in and my mother-in-law was running. This was a first for me, really shooting people in general was a first for me, and I had a fun time doing it.

It was definitely a challenge, especially given my gear and where observers were allowed to be. The longest lens I have is the 50-135 and the girls were anywhere from 50-75 ft away so I ended up having to crop some of the photos by more than I would have liked. The other challenge was lighting. Lighting on the stage was provided by those multi-colored can lights (most were either red or blue), which depending on where they're standing can give a slightly different color cast. I was allowed to use flash so I mounted a speed light with a CTO gel, which btw was also my first time using for something other than experimenting and learning, and tried to lower the power enough to provide some fill but not overpower the stage lights. I've found that the best results with flash are those in which you can't tell flash was used. So here are the results from some of the better ones:

1.
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2.
p1216657528-4.jpg


3.
p1219469960-4.jpg


4.
p1219626066-4.jpg


The one in the black dress is my sister-in-law and was my main 'target'. Since she was wearing black, I tried to keep the ISO down as much as possible to prevent noise. I ended up shooting ISO 1600, f/5, 1/160. Unfortunately I wasn't able notice that some were coming out slighty soft and a few had very slight motion blur on the camera LCD or I would have tried to bump the shutter speed just a bit more... 1/200 would have probably been enough.

Anyway, I'd really appreciate some feedback. I kept getting the feeling they were underexposed but when I tried bumping the exposure up in post some areas of skin were clearly blown out so I don't know if it's the black background that plays tricks on my eyes or what. Hopefully many of you are familiar with these kinds of conditions. Anything I could have done different to help improve? Thanks in advance!
 
They. Did. NOT. Look. Like. That. When. I. Was. In. High-school!


Not really sure that there's a lot to CC on; these seem like a good, strong set of well-exposed images, particularily given the conditions.
 
Cute gals!!! Hard to believe these are high school girls...what happened??? Anyway...it sounds like the lighting was not very good for photography. I think these appear decently exposed, with enough light, and JUST enough shutter speed to stop most of the motion, although you did mention that shutter speed was an issue. My feeling is that the skin tones are a bit too much toward the orange...probably due to tanned skin, the orange CTO gel, and the artificial light they had there. Their teeth and eye whites look white enough, but the skin tones look a wee bit too orange.

I don't have much else to add, except that these kind of events can be very challenging to shoot.
 
Thanks Derrel! I appreciate the comments. I tried using their paper as a manual grey point for WB but to me, they ended up looking like they had a bit of green tint to them. Maybe I'll try to tweak the RAW files a bit more to see if I can get a more natural skin tone. As for the CTO gel and trying to match flash with ambient... I wasn't 100% sure how to approach this but here was my process. I first took a few sample shots with manual Kelvin Temp WB to try and zero in on ambient/overall color temp. On my camera LCD, ~3700K looked good so I reached into the bag and pulled out the closest gel I had which was to convert 5000K to 3800K. Once I got the RAW files on my cinema display, I noticed that they were a bit too warm, warmer than they looked on the camera LCD so this means my CTO was probably off by a bit more too. It was definitely closer than bare flash though. I took a couple of shots before the pageant with bare flash and it was definitely bluer than ambient. And you are right, it was tough! A longer lens would have been nice and a body that would allow me to comfortably push the ISO just a bit more for DARK scenes would have also been great. Thanks again for taking the time.
 
I agree they are nice, especially given the conditions. Was your flash in your hot shoe or mounted remotely?
 
I agree they are nice, especially given the conditions. Was your flash in your hot shoe or mounted remotely?

Thanks, I had the flash in the hot shoe. They had the first couple of rows of seats blocked off for their judges so I wasn't allowed to move or place anything were I wanted. The ceiling was also way too high and dark for bounce so I figured the best option was probably hot shoe pointed at them for fill only. Any more power and I was afraid they'd look flat.
 
Lighting and exposure look good, so well done on that. But the skin color is really killing it for me.

Any more power and I was afraid they'd look flat.
Sometimes you just have to know when to kill the terrible ambient lighting with your flash.
 
I agree that they are great shots. I don't mind the orange color so much, especially considering this is a beauty pageon, so it gives them a bit of nice glow...
 
Why are there no pics?
 
Yeah, the pics are gone. Bring them back please!!!
 
Sorry everyone, I deleted the originals to try and correct this 'warmth' issue and I reloaded them when I was done. So here's the edits I was able to come up with along with the original orangish version.

1
Too warm:
p1230650570-4.jpg

Adjusted:
p1230559432-4.jpg


2
Too Warm:
p1230650488-4.jpg

Adjusted:
p1230553322-4.jpg


3
Too Warm:
p1230652818-4.jpg

Adjusted:
p1230576972-4.jpg


4
Too Warm:
p1230654582-4.jpg

Adjusted:
p1230585064-4.jpg



 
Last edited:
Ok something is up. I think maybe I need to work on the color profile because the file open in PS looks much better than when I upload it to zenfolio. Argg!

Edit: Oooook, after I refreshed, the 'Adjusteds' look right now so I'm not sure what was going on there.
 
I like to use flickr. The photos always look the same as they do on my laptop and the orig size is still available.
 
I like to use flickr. The photos always look the same as they do on my laptop and the orig size is still available.

I got the issue worked out. BTW, just because they look the same as they do on your laptop as they do on flickr, doesn't mean they'll look correct as a print. Color profiles are very important and different printers have different color profiles. Different browsers can also render color profiles differently. If you want to make sure that your product is consistent from beginning to end, it is something you can't ignore.
 

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