SelFies and SHoot THroughs

[Robert Watcher]

Attended the 10'th wedding anniversary of our youngest daughter and her husband - last night. A section of the restaurant was cordoned off for the enjoyment of the 60 guests.

I was instructed not to be bothering those invited by shooting personalized videos or turning the evening into an obvious shoot - - - so I restrained myself by sitting quietly on my own and looking for different ways to shoot inconspicuously.

And so I found many people sitting beside me with the arms on the table or their laps - creating gaps that I could shoot through. As is the trend now, everyone was shooting a ton of "Selfies" with their iPhones and iPads. And so while the subjects were occupied looking at their arms outstretched camera (or if someone was shooting it for them) - - - I was sneaking my artistic, emotion packed shots without drawing attention to myself.

This small selection from the night were captured with my no-too-obvious Olympus Pen E-PL5 with 14-42 kit lens. The setting was not overly bright and so required all photos to be shot at 6400 ISO at 1/30'th to 1/50'th second wide open.

​

 

[Robert Watcher]

​

 

[Robert Watcher]

​

 

[Doug Kerr]

Hi, Rob,

Lovely stuff.

Calls to mind the old question, "But who will watch the watcher?

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Juvenal, Satire VI (maybe)​

Thanks.

Best regards,

Doug

 

[Jerome Marot]

The setting was not overly bright and so required all photos to be shot at 6400 ISO at 1/30'th to 1/50'th second wide open.

I read that sentence, but at the same time I see in the pictures that, under the same light, people photograph each other with cell phones. Sure, these phones have tiny lights, but they cannot be sufficient to illuminate more than one person.

What is happening here? Are the pictures from the phones so much worse than what you are presenting us? Do the phones also run at iso 6400? Are the tiny lights more powerful than I think? Do these phones have much faster lenses? All of the above?

Same light, different cameras. What is happening?

 

[Robert Watcher]

I have no idea about the iPhone results Jerome. What I do have, is the Exif data written to each of these files - that shows the use of 6400 ISO along with the slowish shutter speeds.


--------

 

[Chris Heilman]

Cool Robert. Dig the high iso look. Digital ain't so bad afterall!

 

[Robert Watcher]

QUESTION?

How do you provide something usable to the persons who's event you have photographed?

I remember that the day after I took these photos for my daughters anniversary - - - her and her husband were insistent on looking through everything I had taken. I was as well insistent that they would get bored as there were almost 700 images captured.

As usual - - - they won out and I opened up Lightroom and set the collection to Slideshow. I headed off to play with the grandchildren, and when I came back 10 minutes later, I could see in their body language, that they had had enough, but were too embarrassed to stop watching.

Fact is, that they weren't that impressed with the images that I shot. Move on . . .

. . . to the response that i got from these same people yesterday - when I finally delivered the final cut in a Youtube slideshow with music. They loved it and expressed how they would treasure it in the future as well.

Fact is that the slideshow is a tad long for my preference - - - at just under 6 minutes. But it is family and not really important to anyone other than my daughter and her husband. It is still reasonable and I wanted to include shots of all friends and family and the good time they had.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNAp282EwLQ
​

One of the best tools besides a hard copy album - that we have today to present a photo story - - - is the Slideshow/Video/Multimedia/Audio presentation. Some additional thoughts that I presented here: http://openphotographyforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18499



--------