Are You Kidding Me?

'We don't need you now, but we really need you in July.  We have speaking tests in July.'  Somewhat paraphrased, but continue anyway.  'But you have an operation...'

'Well I'm not going to stop the operation.'

'Oh really, that's good!'

'No wait, I'm not going to stop an operation just so you can make me do speaking tests for a few days.'

'Oh...  That's a shame.'

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I hate my boss.  The person who has appraised my value, and found it (conservatively estimated) worth less than mouldy cabbage.  The person who isn't actually my boss, but who has taken it upon herself to fuss over me, to ensure I loathe her existence.

On the plus side, there are a million things about her that suggest this behaviour is not voluntary - that she is merely reacting to myriad external stimuli.  I can't obfuscate the obvious more than that, but I do so for good reason.  (I don't want to lose my job).

Without a doubt, terrible human beings exist within this universe.

Anyway.

I took a few pictures of a violinist at the weekend (#aside# a fat old man just walked past sucking his teeth to get some lodged food out of there, jesus that's disgusting).  Some of them are exceptional if I do say so myself.  I showed my friends and they were, at best, nonplussed.  I'm therefore keen to re-evaluate my previous statement and qualify it by saying I think they're awesome.

There's a question I've always wanted to know the answer to.  I want to give out pictures as presents.  A big print is always a magnificent thing to behold, but I particularly enjoy shooting people (hehehe) which produces prints that don't really lend themselves to presents.  People don't want pictures of people they don't know in their homes.  Is there a point at which you just say, screw it, and send them off anyway?  Or do you try to take some pictures of landscapes?  I don't really know the answer.  I'm not particularly afraid of one of my pictures ending up in the attic; never to see daylight again - therefore I might send the people pics and cross my fingers.

Without further bluster, here they are.  Bear in mind (okay, a little more bluster) that I really love a couple of these.  You can try to guess which ones, but I've already been told that my favourite is actually the wrong choice, so you may feel differently; a legitimate response to photography.

They're in no particular order.  If I may take a moment of your time, I want to talk about noise.  The higher the sensitivity you select, the more noise you get.  Now, shooting at night usually requires a flash (the pictures are quite bright, but it was deceptively dark) especially when it was as dark as it was.  Now, noise is generally considered bad, so you want to select as low an ISO as possible to eliminate it.  To do that, you use a tripod or a flash.  These are two surefire ways of minimising noise and getting sharp images.  Another is to use a big wide, fast lens.  A 50mm lens is good for street photography because it mimics the equivalent focal length of the eye (is it the focal length?  I can't remember) so you get 'nice,' looking images.  They also go to f 1.4, or sometimes lower.  My current lens is f 4, which means it lets in many times less light that the f 1.4 (it should be noted that a lot of prime lenses go to 1.4, not just the 50mm, I just mention that one because it's the kind of lens I want).  Less light requires a higher ISO which means more noise.  These pictures would have been far better quality if I'd had an f 1.4 of some kind.

Having just said all that, one of the key reasons why I love these pictures is because they're raw (he he he, camera pun).  I set the camera to do no noise reduction, instead opting to do it on the computer should I choose.  I ended up not doing that because it doesn't feel quite the same.  The image quality is undoubtedly improved, but you lose the feeling of it being at night, a spontaneous shoot that just kind of happened.

This guy actually stood still long enough to get a (relatively) good image.  I tried to get him to do one of those 'cool,' poses the musicians in Japan like, but he was embarrassed.  I say cool advisedly, because they actually look like massive cocks.  He probably made the right decision.

Interestingly, this is the favourite of one of my friends.  Rules are meant to be broken, thirds be damned.  I don't know why she looks so intense in this picture, because she was smiling pretty much the whole time.

Spoiler alert, this is my favourite one.

 I took about a hundred pictures of the pair because I was terrified of how high the ISO was (6400!!) setting itself, and how fast she was moving.  The camera refused to go above 1/60 of a second (not fast enough), which meant that I was certain they'd be a completely blurred mess.  It turned out they were all completely blurred messes, but there are a few that turned out to be nicely blurred messes.  I think at least.  I had a quick check of the first few, found that they were images of ghosts, not people - then proceeded to max everything in the hope that it would work out.  Once you've got the settings as good as possible, just roll with it.

The pair posed afterwards.  Like I said, I tried to get them to act cool, but they were too embarrassed.

This one would have been my favourite if it were a fraction sharper.  This is a classic example of an almost picture.  One that is nearly what you want it to be.  Needless to say, I've thousands of these.

I just liked the trails of white in this one.  It looks like hair blowing in the wind, or something.  I don't know.

So those are my pictures.  It was a lot of fun, and she was a great performer.  The music was superb, and she kept looking into the camera (a lot of people don't like that, but I really enjoy the draw of having the subject looking directly at you, the viewer).

Of course it helps that she was a beauty, but great talent often transcends such factors.  At least that's what I'm told.

I need to do some colour correction to get them right, but as they stand, I'm extremely pleased.

Shoot me down, internet!

P.S.  Over 20,000 views.  Woop!  (Ten thousand are my refreshing the page, but hey, who cares).