ADFH Practical exam

Hé Ho!!!

This year was a very different experience for me at the Festival du Voyageur. Usually i'm just a spectator but this time I was one of the official photographers.

I would have really enjoyed taking pictures at the street party if it wasn't so cold. I think it was around -40 but Ross told us a lot of it is in your head, so I kept on taking as many pictures as I could to forget about how cold I was. I really enjoyed the concerts that night, they were very up beat! After 3 hours of shooting, my camera froze up so I wasn't able to take anymore pictures. I had some difficulty with my exposures because the stage was lite with bright lights and the sky was black. After a few bad pictures I was able to figure it out.
The next night we had to get all dressed up for the Governer's ball. I was pretty nervous to be there but I figured it would be a very good experience. I was very excited to take pictures of everybody in their nice dresses and suits. Unfortunately we weren't able to, they had very strict rules that night so we only got to take pictures of the people walking in. I thought it was difficult getting pictures that didn't look like point and shoot but that was the best we could get.
La Fureur was fun to photograph. The people that were participating in that game had very expressive faces. Also there were several different groups so there was a good variety. I found that the CCFM had the best lighting conditions (compared to the other places I photographed).
My last night was the most difficult because there were two very different light sources, tungsten and fluorescent. I had trouble white balancing. So I did the best I could and my results were ok. I think I could have done better.

What I had the most trouble with during the Festival was my exposures. I think towards the end I started to better understand exposure compensation ( I had never really used it before). So i'm glad that I was able to practice that.

I thought that I was pretty well equipped. I bought a new memory card just for the Festival ( I was scared that mine was going to fail). I also bought a new backpack to fit all my gear. The only thing I would have wanted was a better tripod. Other than that everything went well.

I thought that most of my images were pretty average. I had a few that were better than others but I took this as a learning experience. It was the first time I ever shot concerts and had to deal with those lighting conditions. Under those circumstances I think I did ok.