High School Guys and Dolls

Last evening was the dress rehearsal of my local High School's production of the musical Guys and Dolls. I used the full frame 5D Mark III with the 70-200mm f/4 lens and the crop sensor 7D Mark II with the 17-55mm (27-88mm eq.) f/2.8 lens. The usual problems with lighting resulted in about six hours of processing for three hours of shooting followed by an hour of uploading the 358 over five gigs of files. You can view the gallery at https://trulandphotography.com/guysanddolls.

The Morning After

The morning after the Tugboat Roundup, that is. For the first time in seven years I was unable to shoot the tugboats arriving on Friday evening. I also missed out on the Kayaking 4 Meso event on Saturday at the flight of locks. Because of a slight shift change on my hospice care duty, I was able to get out for a walk this morning over to Waterford Harbor where some of the tugboats were still berthed.

All of these photos are five file HDR composites made with a Canon 5D Mark III and EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens.

Dragon Boat Races

Apparently Dragon Boats are a thing. And there's a company that organizes events, mostly benefit type events, where local teams race the boats and they make a day of it.

Today, such an event was held in Waterford Harbor to benefit breast cancer charities. I spent a little over an hour at the beginning of the day making photos. I saw three heats from three different vantage points.

There's a 64 image gallery located at https://trulandphotography.com/dragonboats2019. Here are a few downsized samples.

2019 Waterford Steamboat Meet

I've stopped in on this year's Steamboat Meet several times. The most productive time was late morning on Friday as a number of the boats were out for cruises before the heat of the day, which hit 92 degrees.

Here are some shots from then, all with my second 5D Mark III and EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II USM lens. A 33 image gallery is located at https://trulandphotography.com/steamboat2019.

Paddling the Waterford Flight of Locks

Last September I shot a benefit event called Kayaking 4 Meso which involved kayakers traveling down through the Waterford flight of locks on the Saturday of Tugboat Roundup weekend. Photos of that event can be seen here.

I saw a similar event publicized for this morning. I think it may have been organized by the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor but sometimes groups publicize events but aren't organizing them.

In any case, I decided to intercept the flotilla at some point along the flight of locks and ended up catching them as they were waiting to descend lock E5 so I waited at lock E4 to catch them transiting toward the lock and exiting below. I used both a 5D Mark III with the EF 24-105mm f.4L lens and the 7D Mark II with the EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 IS II lens.

Here some results with the full gallery located at https://trulandphotography.com/ptf2019.

Congratulations Sarah and Anthony

This past Sunday saw a family wedding at a nice Saratoga Springs venue. I brought along a 5D Mark III body and the EF 85mm f/1.8 USM lens. The photographer for the wedding was https://www.viscosiphotography.com/ and they had a nice bunch of Canon gear.

I ended up only making a dozen or so photos, all at f/1.8 and ISO 3200. Shutter speeds ranged from 1/125th of a second to 1/500th. Here are a few.

Fiddler on the Roof

It's time for the annual Fall musical production at my local public school district. I've been shooting one of the final "dress" rehearsals for about six years now, using a variety of camera bodies and lenses.

This year, like last year, I used one of my Canon 5D Mark III bodies and the EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens. These last two years are the only ones where I didn't have a 70-200mm f/2.8 (or equivalent) lens to use. With the shorter zoom and slower aperture I've had to position myself closer to the stage and raise the ISO a bit.

The ISO isn't a problem with the 5D Mark III and the only real problem with the shorter zoom is not being high enough to shoot over the orchestra, etc. in the foreground. You can see all of the galleries over the years in the collection at https://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/burghdrama.

I think I actually prefer being closer to the stage. In any case, this year's photos can be seen at https://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/fiddler. I usually post a representative sample of the shots I like best but this year I'm going to post a series of shots that I really like.

Most every photo had to be adjusted for white balance, highlight and shadow, contrast, brightness or something else before being converted to a jpg and uploaded to zenfolio. This series, however, was as good as it was going to get without any adjustments. A dream sequence behind Tevye as he sits in his horseless cart.

For some reason, white balance and everything else fell into place inside the computer in the camera. I love it when that happens.

Tugboat Roundup 2018 - Day 2

The two events related to the Tugboat Roundup I shot yesterday were Kayaking 4 Meso's kayak flotilla traveling through lock E6 as they made their way down to Waterford Harbor and the fireworks. For the Kayaks in the morning, I used my 5D Mark III and 24-105mm lens and for the fireworks switched over to the Tamron 45mm lens.

The 24-105mm lens is quite versatile as the photos from lock E6 show. Captions will indicate the focal length. There is a gallery of the Kayaking4Meso event at https://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/k4m2018.

105mm

24mm

35mm

I chose the 45mm lens for the night time shots because of it's faster f/1.8 maximum aperture and yet it still has image stabilization, or vibration compensation as Tamron calls it. And 45mm is a good focal length for these types of shots.

I used ISO 800 and 1600 and f/2 and shutter speeds varied between 1/4 sec. and 1/20 sec. The vibration compensation allowed handheld operation at those shutter speeds.

Fifteen night time photos have been added to the gallery at https://trulandphoto.zenfolio.com/tugboatroundup2018. Here are a few samples.