MAKE-A-WISH DANCING WITH WISH STARS

I shot an event for Make-A-Wish last night. It was a bit challenging because the light at the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor is awful and the production manager insisted I didn't use flash or set up any strobes because they didn't want it to bother the dancers. Since these were armature volunteer dancers for the most part it made sense so know one was distracted and got hurt. (On a side not if this was a paying gig I would have gone to the location the week before to work out lighting details.)

So they showed me the lighting and it was not good. I would need to shoot at least 1600 ISO, if not more, to get at least a shutter speed of 100 wide open at f2.8, ugh! Not good to stop action. Also the high ISO on my Nikon D2X just sucks and I don’t have a long Canon lens yet. So I just shot the hell out of the dancing knowing I would need only one usable image of each couple and hoping it would be an interesting looking image.

The good news is the light ended up being brighter then they first showed me so I got closer to 1/200th for a shutter speed as long as I shot the dancers in the middle of the stage. Also even with the high ISO the photos will look fine on the web and luckily Make-A-Wish doesn’t use photos real big in their newsletter and other printed publications. So for what they needed I ended up with some decent shots.

One last thing. I can’t stress enough what a great organization Make-A-Wish of Michigan is and I’m glad to help them out with my photography. If you can donate time or money please visit their website and contact them! www.wishmich.org