Festival Ballet's "Sleeping Beauty"

Last big shoot with the 10D before the MkII arrived.. finally got around to uploading some..

REMEMBER SOME These are being resized in an AWEFULL way..

Please click the image for a better view.. I think the last one is getting hit the hardest (many are being BLOWN UP?? )...

Absolutely gorgeious, CDS. You didn't need a new camera.

Nice shots CDS! The one of the queen simply rocks.

Great shots, CDS.

beautiful shots

Those are some really outstanding photos. Very nicely done.

WOW, great performance photo's.
I love the angle and would love to see them in poster format .

Great work.

Greetings,
Frank

the composition of the last one is amazing. The first one rocks my panties too, it looks so surreal with the legs blended in the background. Great shots.

Excellent work CDS. Cannot wait to see results from the MK II

These are great CDS. There is a lot to like about a lot of the shots.
Rob

WOW!! Alll great shots. I like the 1,2& 4 the best. I love all dance photos what a honor to be allowed to photograph this.

Some details, what lens did you use? Were you asked to take photos?

NiL,

Thanks folks!

A few answers.. in no particular order..

Eos 10D with 70-200mm f/2.8 IS
ISO 800 or 1600 depnding on lighting, most are AV @ f/2.8

Festival performs on the stage that I manage (Tech Director) and has given me permission to take phots during rehearsals.. Althought these were "dress rehearsal" you can see the mix of full costume and the occasional pair of sweat pants of leggings you'd not see during a perfromance...

Also,. by shooting during rehearsals.. I get some strange environments with unfinished lighting,.. and in many cases obscure backgrounds...

In the last shot above.. the backdrop for the scene had not yet been hung.. thus instead all that we see is a standard white Cyclorama that has been colored with "Cyc" lights.. this happy coincidence gave me an amazing backdrop for many of the shots,.. it worked very well in this case for sure giving a dreamuy effect that the painted castle backdrop would not have.

FYI the "Witch/Queen" is the Companie's Artisitc Director, Mihailo Djuric, ...in drag!

He spent much of the rehearsals looking like "Cher"... but in the photos I found the character to be extremely photogenic.. his sense of "drama" clearly visible..

I've not gotten the nerve to send him a print yet.. but I think I should 8)

Yes, provide a copy of the Queen shot to the artistic director. It really a great shot. (My favorite of the bunch). The shot seems heavily orange though. The way he is holding his fingers works well with the crown!

Yes,. the "orange" reflects the actual lighting in use quite accurately..

FYI only the last photo above saw any time in PS..

The rest are either extracted half res jpegs reduced or reductions of Large Fine jpegs with only "ACSsee Auto levels" .. or no level/color adjustment at all... I find ACDSee's autolevels tends to make everythuing far to cool and blue.. so I can't use it often.. like with the Witch photo.

When I'm prepping this many photos for uploading I rarely do any real post processing... so these are mostly straight out of camera other than a crop.

So.. the WitchQueen will get some color tweaking before printing!