I volunteered to photograph the North
Valley Relay for Life, a fundraising activity for the American Cancer
Society once again at Paradise Valley Community College in Phoenix,
Arizona.
Volunteering as a photographer is a great
way to give back. I find it fun to share
my talent and help a good cause. I also
feel I get just a little bit better every time I do one of these events.
The relay started in the late afternoon,
so I had some golden hour lighting left, but I also had some harsh shadows to
contend with. At times I filled with a
bit of flash. I also found the “shadow”
slider on Lightroom 4 to be invaluable in recovering faces in severe
shading. Below, I caught a couple from KZON 101.5 with that lovely light.
As it got darker, then the decision was
to turn up the ISO and not use flash or use a wee bit of flash turned down to
light subjects but keep the background dark.
One of the highlights of the all-night event was the lighting of the
luminarias and the walk around the track first by the cancer
survivors. I had done this type of photography before
and decided it best to turn off my flash and work with the light off the
candles, turning up my ISO to 3200 (I shot with a Canon 5D Mark III and a Canon
24-105mm lens). The 5D Mark III does a
heck of a job with high ISO! I worked
with an F stop of 4 and was usually in the 1/20th to 1/30th
range for shutter speed, all hand held.
Even five years ago the technology was not there to do this, so I am
thankful I was packing the 5D.
Being that this is a charitable event, I
am not charging for my photographs. So
after editing, I uploaded from Lightroom into my professional Zenfolio site at http://bit.ly/131ORmk I gave the event coordinators instructions on
how to download any of the photos they’d like to use. All I want is credit.
My next photo
adventure will be mid-May when I
travel to Denver to do some macro photography with Canon.
Until then, Happy Shooting!
Jim Patterson
Here is a slideshow of all the photos I took at the North Valley
Relay for Life
Beautiful pictures for a beautiful cause
ReplyDeleteNice job!