Frisbee Serendipity

I'm not sure what to say about these pictures, they're just a couple of those happy accidents that occur now and then. A coincidence of run-down batteries and a finger that's quicker than the eye. A last-minute situation change that had me first expecting free reign at a play rehearsal to suddenly needing to restrict my shooting to the extreme sides of the stage, since there would be an audience in the house.

Shooting this way, not being able to even see the action from the center of the house, meant I had to anticipate when the actor closest to me would turn in my direction, while their counterpart was still looking my way. I shoot a lot of rubbish this way, but can usually get two or three usable images if I'm careful.

April 2008

But if the flash doesn't recycle as fast as I shoot, then the shutter doesn't sync, and defaults to the exposure for the ambient light of the stage. Since I shoot ISO 320 at f8, this leads to a fairly slow shutter speed, 1/30th of a second in the case of the picture above, and 1/8 of a second for the three-handed fellow at the top.

(I should mention here my choice of a title for this entry. In the days of shooting slides, unusable pictures were known as 'frisbees' because of the way they were tossed into the waste bin. And every now and then there would be a few like these, not really good for anything, but still interesting to look at.)