David Griffin Photography » Events

2010 WAVM Telethon

Dave — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 15:41:28 +0000

Yes, it’s the most wonderful time of the year…. For too many years I’ve been involved with the WAVM Beacon Santa Telethon — a 40-hour non-stop live television / radio / webcast production that is staged by the students of Maynard High School’s student-run WAVM station. The money raised by these students goes to the Beacon Santa Fund.

A gallery of my favorite images from the weekend can be found on my community site: http://community.dmg-photography.com

And if you are really hungry for pictures, the WAVM website has hundreds of photographs spanning the entire weekend.

For probably the past 10 years I’ve been photographing the event — trying to capture as much of the “behind the scenes” activities that go on.

For a few weeks before the telethon adult volunteers and staff members work to “tag” items for the auction. These items are stuffed into a tiny storage room until Friday afternoon when we finally pull them all out and spread them around the library so they can be grouped and prepared for on-air auctioning.

Live music is a featured part of the telethon. Headlining Friday night was “One Seventeen” a band of MHS grads from the 70s. The dudes were tight.

Here’s a shot of a quartet called “Limelight”

My friend Vic Lalli (“Mister Vic“) brings his music class into Studio B and sings a few holiday tunes. When you are bone-tired from a week of preparation and working until 2am with technical details, pictures like this make it all worthwhile.

Students man the phone bank and take bids on auction items. They do a great job under a lot of pressure.

Here are a few of the hosts celebrating the end of the telethon. A few minutes later some last minute donations put them over the $28,000 mark.

Harmony Halloween Horse Show

Dave — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 02:47:24 +0000

Photographing shows at the Harmony stables in Littleton is always a mixed blessing. It’s always fun to photograph the riders and horses but the lighting there makes it a real challenge to get good images.

Two sets from the day are on my events page. (Not all of the photographs are top-notch — some are there just so riders can do a little self-evaluation if they wish.)

Here are a few more favorites from the day…

Technical details:

As you might notice I spent the day in portrait mode. The subjects pretty much dictated the vertical composition.

All images shot with a Canon 1D Mark II, 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, on a monopod. ISO 1250 most of the day. Exposure varied greatly depending on about a dozen factors (barn lighting, constantly changing outside light, numerous backlight situations, subject distance, time-of-day). Like I said, this place keeps you on your toes.

Lightroom processing is pretty heavy to mitigate lens flare from backlighting — consequently most of the images have a different look than what you might normally associate with my photographs. I covered this processing in an earlier blog article.

Visitor Center at Assabet River NWR Grand Opening

Dave — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 16:31:46 +0000

On Sunday we marked the opening of the new visitor center at the Assabet River National Wildlife Refuge. The center supports the eight refuges in the Eastern Massachusetts NWR Complex (Assabet River NWR, Great Meadows NWR, Mashpee NWR, Monomoy NWR, Nantucket NWR, Nomans Land Island NWR and Oxbow NWR).

A full set of my photographs from the day is available from: community.dmg-photography.com/2010-arnwr-vc-opening

The visitor center is part of a new design ethic created by the Fish & Wildlife Service. It is the first standalone visitor center that is part of a suite of standardized designs – reducing costs across the NWR system.

The celebration included hikes, bike tours, and “bunker” tours — the Assabet River NWR has 50+ ammunition bunkers from World War II. Above, Jan Wright, leads a tour of one of the bunkers just down the road from the visitor center. Over 200 people toured the bunker on Sunday.

Meanwhile, further down the path, a workshop for kids that explored pond life was led by Arthur Skura and Richard DeFlorio.

Libby Herland, Project Manager for the Eastern MA NWR Complex, welcomed the audience to the opening ceremonies.

Chief Roland Jerome, from the United Native American Cultural Center in Ayer, spoke at the close of the ceremony finishing with a blessing and drumming.

Before it was a refuge the land was a World War II ammunition dump — and before that it was home to families and farms. One of those families, the Carbary’s, turned the center opening into a family reunion with 50+ members arriving from all over the United States.

———-

Technical stuff:

Shot most of the day with a 7D, 24-70mm f/2.8L lens with a circular polarizer. Also used a 5DMk2 with a 70-200mm f/2.8L lens. I’m sure the lenses shuffled between the cameras now and then. Moving back and forth from bright sunlight to interiors I kept the cameras in Av mode with Auto ISO. (Well, except for when the poorly designed 5D control wheel rotated to another setting without me noticing.)

Not much in the way of processing (clarity +18, vibrance +18, profile lens corrections). Some of the photos from the ceremony were washed out by the sun reflecting off the side of the tent (probably hitting the polarizer pretty badly). These required extending the black point to restore contrast. The photo of the (exhibit) kingfisher looking at the crowd had a +1/2 stop localized adjustment to the bird.

Maynard Fest 2010

Dave — Sun, 03 Oct 2010 01:03:02 +0000

Probably the biggest annual event here in town happens the first Saturday of October. The morning starts with Maynard Fest. Organized by the Assabet Valley Chamber of Commerce it celebrates commerce, community and culture. They close down Main and Nason Streets and the downtown becomes one big fair from 9am to 3:30pm: vendors selling crafts, toys, and various trinkets, numerous food stands, a wide variety of civic groups from in and around Maynard, a number of local music groups performing in Memorial Park and, of course, rides, bouncy castles, and other activities for kids.

After Maynard Fest the Octoberfest starts down the street with lots of food and music — and the evening ends with fireworks. It’s a full day of fun if you’re up for it. (I wasn’t so I didn’t photograph either evening event…)

If you would like to see more images from the day, I have two albums set up. One is rather complete (some might say exhausting), with over 200 photographs from the day — the other contains 40 of my personal favorites — a handful of those are in this article.

Maynard Fest 2010 (full set)
Maynard Fest 2010 Highlights

Here are a few more of my favorite photographs from Maynard Fest with a bit of commentary.

While editing 400+ images from the day I was struck with how hard it is to catch kids smiling. Thrills and new experiences doesn’t always equal a constant grin. This fellow here was caught at the right moment:

I endeavor to make one photograph of every part of the event, but not every one is going to be a winner. So in addition to “coverage” I also try to find “iconic” images of a small town fair. For a number of reasons this one said “Maynard” to me…

The artists at Earth Changes Pottery were demonstrating their skill right on the sidewalk. I could photograph potters all day…

Springbrook Farm, just over the border in Stow, had a corner of Memorial Park with a few of their Alpacas and various goods made from their wool. These shy animals were doing pretty well considering they are normally on a tranquil farm and they spent the day next to a busy street and had hundreds of people stopping by. They are also too cute for words…

I normally seek candid images, but when I tried to take a photograph of these Assabet Valley Regional Technical High School students they just struck a pose. I’m not complaining.

We had the remnants of a tropical storm dump a couple of inches of rain on us yesterday but today was clear blue skies. Great for the crowds but really lousy for photography — the light was quite harsh and I spent a bit of time in Lightroom tweaking a lot of the images taken in full sun.

While I “made” this photograph, I didn’t take it. After a couple of minutes at this bouncy castle I knew that one of the tunnels would probably be well lit by the sun — but there was no way for me to get there without climbing on the ride. I could barely reach the bottom of the tunnel so I stuck my camera in there and fired a shot to check my exposure. I locked that in, set my focus and opened the 16-35mm to 16mm wide. I then handed the camera to the young lady in the upper left of the previous photo and asked if she would just point and shoot it at the next kid who came along. She was pretty nervous about doing this but she did it 3 times and 2 of images were exactly as I visualized them. Here’s one of them:

Fire trucks and ice cream — that’s the life!

Lots of live music all day…

… and, apparently, free hugs:

And every once in a while, another smile…

Technical stuff:

I carried two cameras with me all day: Canon 40D with 70-200mm f/2.8 L and a Canon 7D with a 24-70mm f/2.8L (for 1/2 of the day) and a 16-35mm f/2.8L (for the 2nd half of the day). Both cameras were in Auto ISO mode most of the time and either in aperture or shutter priority mode as needed. As noted the light conditions were very harsh and I was moving between full-on sun and shade/shadow constantly. In retrospect I probably should have had a -1/3 stop or so exposure compensation dialed in more than I did to take the edge off the bright sun. I had a fair number of images compromised by the wide dynamic range and I should have cheated under a bit. Metering was evaluative and center-weighted, depending on the subject and conditions.

Post processing done in Lightroom 3. I took about 450 images and tossed about 20 right away (half of them were shots of the sidewalk — I guess the release button hit my leg or something). I then did a pass for white balance — first everything at around 5700K and then I use the “spray” tool to “paint” a 7000K setting on images taken in shade or shadow. Everything got a +20 clarity and +20 vibrance — my standard tweak for raw images.

After working one image that had particularly harsh light I realized that the settings would probably work for a lot of other similar images. I dropped the exposure by 0.8EV, set Recovery to 38, set Fill to 38, and the black point to 28. This provided a base that worked surprisingly well across a wide variety of images: the EV drop and Recovery softened the harsh highlights, while the fill brought back what would normally be midtones and the black point restored the contrast.

There are always special cases and I tweaked those images as needed, but the great majority were handled with the above workflow settings.

I happened to turn on Lens Profile Correction for one image and liked what it did so much that I applied it to all of the images. A spot check of the set indicated that this was the correct decision. I may now make this part of my standard Lightroom workflow. What a frickin’ cool feature.

Shooting in the Dark – River Solstice

Dave — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 22:13:13 +0000

For the past eight years or so we’ve had this fun little event on our local rivers, River Solstice, that celebrates the longest day of the year. We’ve had our share of washouts, but most of the time Mother Nature cooperates. The location and the nature of the event make this a definite challenge to capture photographically. After a nice picnic on the lawn of the Old Manse (where the music performers typically have the sun setting almost directly behind them) a large number of paddlers descend on the Concord River at sunset to begin a flotilla of boats, most with lanterns, up to the Old Calf Pasture where a bonfire and drumming occurs. My goal was to photograph the paddlers making their way up the river.

So let’s be clear about the challenge: 1) subjects are gliding by on the river, 2) I’m in a kayak on the same river, 3) the sun has set and it is rapidly getting quite dark. Perfect! Let’s make some portraits!

The full set of images is available on my community gallery. In there you will see the progression of the evening’s light disappearing and I was left to find whatever candle or other light was nearby. There was a near full moon rising, but it really didn’t have much of an impact when I was shooting.

Here’s the link to the evening’s pictures: [url]http://community.dmg-photography.com/2010-river-solstice[/url]

What follows are a few highlights of the evening plus some technical details for those that are interested. I encourage you to look at the full gallery mostly because it clearly shows that the current generation of DSLR cameras are capable of some pretty amazing photographs in some relatively challenging conditions.

The evening starts with a picnic and music on the lawn of The Old Manse in Concord which overlooks the Old North Bridge. I tried to have some fun with the strong back and rim lighting the setting sun provided.

The kayak and canoe “parking lot” was pretty full…

Some folks were watching the moon rise in style…

The sun has set, the singers are making their way along the river to the Old Calf Pasture for some pagan fun, and the flotilla of boats begins working its way up the Concord River…

My friend Julia Blatt, who heads the Massachusetts Rivers Alliance, was paddling with her hubby…

Night quickly overtakes the river… I think a number of people were kind of shocked that I was taking photographs — and probably assumed that everything I was doing would be a blurry mess. (I knew otherwise…)

Here we are at the Old Calf Pasture where a bonfire is ringed with torches. The sound of ceremonial drums pierces the darkness. (And drowns out the sound of mosquitos, which are pummeling everyone — or at least me…) For reasons that I won’t go into here, I don’t hop on land and photograph the fire circle despite it being an obvious target of opportunity for great images…

Technical notes:

All photographs were shot with a Canon 7D. Nearly all were taken with the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS, although there are a handful (which I hope are obvious) that were taken with the 24-70mm f/2.8L. All shots are handheld, all but the picnic shots are from a kayak. Due to the rapidly changing light I opted for aperture priority exposure. (If you need me to tell you what aperture I was using most of the evening you probably shouldn’t bother reading the rest of this…)

As the sun sets the camera is set to ISO 1250, then 2500. If you aren’t familiar with shooting on a small New England river, you should be aware that it is similar to being in a hole. The shoreline is typically lined with trees and long before the sun sets you are in shadow. A few minutes after it sets, it just gets plain dark – especially if there are no clouds to reflect light straight down. So it was a matter of a minute or two before I cranked the camera to ISO 6400.

Exposures vary from 1/100 (if there’s a bright lantern) to 1/20th of a second. Image stabilization and years of practice shooting from a kayak kept my throw-aways amazingly low. And a quick shout out to the 7D’s autofocus! I used center-point focus because I know that is typically the most sensitive part of the AF array. Half the time I was hunting for a subject in the viewfinder. If the camera found anything at all, it did a great job of holding focus while I did the final composition and shooting. (This is the primary reason why I didn’t bring the 5DMk2 to this project — it’s low-light AF is, um, “sub par”…)

In the case of these photographs however, the camera only did half the work. A significant portion of the image quality comes from Lightroom 3′s new image processing and noise reduction capabilities. As I cranked up the ISO on the camera in the field, I had a commensurate increase in the luminance noise reduction in Lightroom. Quite frankly, tack sharp images were not my goal. Moving subjects in a dimly lit area don’t feel sharp to our eyes, so I didn’t feel any need to try to bring any particular sharpness out — the default sharpening of Lightroom fit the bill most of the time. Most of the night images had the Luminance noise set to 45. A few, including the young lady at the beginning of this article, were bumped to 64. I knew from reports and the beta testing that the noise reduction was going to be impressive, and it served me well for this assignment.

The processing of these images varies significantly depending on the lighting conditions. The look for the photographs taken after the sun set was achieved by adding fill light and then raising the black point to restore some contrast. I really didn’t want to raise the exposure of the whole image as the scene was, in reality, quite dark — but rather mimic what the human eye does by selectively increasing the luminance of the subjects. A bit of vibrance and a dash of clarity round out the Lightroom processing.

There you have it, a new branch of photography: action portraits in the dark.

Stone Mountain Arts Center Lobby Barn Raising

Dave — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 13:00:33 +0000

On a beautiful Memorial Day weekend a team of timber-framers and neighbors came together to raise a 200-year-old barn once again.

In 2005 the barn’s much younger sister was literally flown over it to a new foundation where it became the Stone Mountain Arts Center performance space. The older barn was disassembled and stored in a nearby field, quietly waiting for its chance to serve again.

Restored by Scott Campbell (Maine Mountain Post & Beam) the structure was raised on its new foundation just a few feet from its original location. The barn will now serve as a lobby and reception area for the Arts Center.

I was there to document the raising of the barn, a 10 hour process involving many hands, backs, and one hydraulic crane. It was humbling to know that a couple of centuries ago a similar event took place with most of the same timbers. I reckon it may have taken more people and more time (and probably a horse or two).

A full, annotated, gallery of the event is available on my SMAC photos page: [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SMAC-Lobby-Barn-Raising[/url]

I shot over 500 stills, 200 video clips, 22 minutes of HDV footage, and a 3000-frame time-lapse video. This is the first of what I suspect will be several “products” related to this event. I hope to create a couple of short-form documentaries or music videos using the video and stills. Here’s the first video from the event, a time-lapse of the the raising:

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Below are a few of my favorite images from the day. After that I include some technical notes on the filming process (settings and setup).

As a fund-raiser for the barn people could sponsor a peg and have a message written on it. When the barn is refurbished in another century or two, these messages will be there to read — a time-capsule in plain sight. These are just a few of the many pegs that carried messages to the future:

The large hammer is called a “beatle” — because it is used to beat a post or beam into place.

When the structure’s is completed a ceremonial “wetting bow” is nailed to the peak:

Technical notes and behind the scenes (including my mistakes):

I had nearly every piece of equipment I own involved in this project:

1) 22 minutes of the initial wall raising was filmed with a Sony HC-7 HDV camcorder that was attached to a signpost using a Jobi Gorillapod and some elastic ties. By the time the crane arrived the sun was MUCH brighter than when I set the camera up. So much brighter that I couldn’t see the viewfinder well enough to tell if the film was rolling. So I just shut it off, turned it back on, pressed the record button and hoped for the best.

Why 22 minutes? To be honest this camera was just a bit of extra coverage and I was using up what was left on a tape. I knew this was going to be at least an 8 hour process and I had no intention or reason to film all of it. I figured the first wall would take less than a half-hour to raise and gambled from there.

2) The time-lapse video was captured with a Canon 10D mounted with a 16-35mm f/2.8L lens at 16mm. The exposure was set manually: 1/80, f/11, ISO 100 and fixed white balance: 5800K. Because of the length of the capture I elected to shoot in JPEG, medium resolution (2048×1152) as this would give me sufficient resolution for a 1080p video frame but still fit the day on a couple of 4GB cards. The camera was controlled by a Canon TC-80 intervalometer.

The camera was mounted on a tripod and ballhead which was fixed to the top of a step ladder with gaffers tape. The step ladder, was set on a reasonably firm surface and ballasted with some spare post pieces that were hanging around. This provided a reasonably stable platform, although you can see small shifts every once in a while when I ascended the ladder to check on exposure, batteries, etc. By incredible luck (for me that is) the camera was able to be aimed almost directly north which meant that the sun was always behind the camera, eliminating a chance of lens flare. Putting a hood on a 16mm lens seems superfluous, but I suppose I should have brought one along.

The camera has a dual battery setup and it performed well considering the age of some of my batteries. If you look closely you will see that there is a slight skip in the video when be broke for lunch. I changed out the batteries with another set at that time.

The 10D was not my first choice for this assignment. It was a backup camera. I wanted to use my 1D Mark II for the job. The 1D’s sensor has a 1.3X crop factor versus the 10D’s 1.6x. The 1D would give me a much larger field of view, and I really wanted it given where the camera had to be placed and the size of barn – especially because I planned on cropping the image down to 16×9 for the video. Being a careful planner, I had scoped this out and fired some test shots on Sunday afternoon to confirm that this was the better camera to use. I had also brought along two batteries for the 1D and its charger. What I didn’t bring is the AC cord for the charger and the Ni-MH batteries don’t hold a charge well for long periods of time — so I had planned on charging them Sunday night. I discovered the lack of a cord around 7pm — which is precisely when the nearest Home Depot closed on a Sunday.

And that’s why I bring backup cameras…

Because of the narrower field-of-view with the 10D I had to guess how tall the barn would be and try to frame it accordingly while still keeping some of the interesting stuff in the foreground. If you watch the time-lapse video you’ll see that the peak of the barn JUST fits into the frame and so I elected to do a little downward tilt of the camera, moving it slowly across about 8 or 9 frames.

I had planned the time-lapse to run about 90 seconds covering the 6 hours, so I had set the camera to take an exposure every 15 seconds, mostly to make sure that I kept within the 4GB limit of the CF card I was using. When the noon-time switch was made I noticed I had used just over 2GB and so I changed the timing to every 10 seconds for the “second half”. The difference isn’t all that extreme but I think it makes some of the crane movements much more fluid and only extended the run-time a slight amount.

3) Video was shot using the Canon 5D Mark II, 1080p at 30fps. I used a 3-stop ND filter and a polarizer on the lenses to cut the light down and give a decent depth of field. I typically shot at 1/50 second, ISO 400, and around f/5.6 — depending on the scene. The camera was stabilized on a monopod, although occasionally used a tripod coupled with the Zaza Slider. I used both the 24-70mm f/2.8L and the 70-200mm f/2.8L IS lenses (mostly the latter) for the video work. Because I was shooting video most of the time (although I shot over 160 stills using the camera) the Zacuto Z-finder made the day a lot nicer.

Audio was not a primary concern for this shoot, but I wanted something cleaner than the camera mic. I had brought along the JuicedLink and some good mics, but opted to just use a wired lav clipped to my shirt and let the 5D do automatic levels (horrors!). Again, I was just looking for natural sounds, but not a structured soundtrack. If I had approached this more as a documentary featuring, say, Scott and wanted to capture dialog I would have used the wireless mics and mixed in natural sound from a shotgun.

4) Stills were captured with the 1D Mark II (until the batteries wore out) and then the Canon 40D. The still camera got whatever lens the 5D wasn’t using at the time (mostly the 24-70mm). The camera was set in aperture-priority mode, ISO 320, and around f/5.6. This gave shutter speeds around 1/1200 to 1/2000 second during the day and would freeze the action well. This was in marked contrast to the 5D which would have lots of motion blur at 1/50 second because of the video settings. I could move between the two looks the cameras would give as needed.

5) I had my MacBook Pro set up in the Arts Center ready to process cards at various points during the day. My little area also had battery chargers going for (almost) all of the cameras. This worked out well and I was able to show people some morning shots and preliminary bits of the time-lapse by the time lunch was over. By the time I left for the evening I had all of the stills processed through Lightroom and the video clips (all 23GB worth) were previewed.

Other than my charger debacle, everything worked as I had planned and I’m really happy with the results and look forward to sharing more of them with everyone in the near future.

True West – April 24, 2010

Dave — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 16:29:27 +0000

Last night we were filming for an Electronic Press Kit I’m producing with one of our local bands, True West. I’ll detail the video production in an upcoming post, but I couldn’t help but grab some stills during the performance. This is a great benefit of the video-capable DSLRs like the Canon 5D Mark II: I was there to shoot video but I could switch to still shooting for certain parts of the performance with relative ease. These are some of my favorite shots of the evening. A larger gallery of images can be found at my Events page:

[url]http://events.dmg-photography.com/2010-truewest-watertown[/url]

They had some basic controls over the lighting, and every once in a while they’d turn on a combination that wasn’t hum-drum. The first photo is the band’s lead vocalist, Laura Pratt, shot in profile and underexposed to emphasize the backlight.

I always feel bad for the drummers — they’re almost always stuck in the back. I managed to catch Tom Greim with some decent light on him.

Jim Pedersen is the bassist and a vocalist for the band. The stage was dominated by two banks of lights flanking the performers. This means that the guys on the end have too much light and the main performer in the center has too little. Shooting into the light creates some nice effects.

That’s John Kelly on the guitar. He was one of the “end guys” that was getting blasted with the lights, so when they picked a low-light situation I couldn’t pass up the opportunity.

Jim Pedersen again, shot at the same time as the first photo.

Allyn Dorr was the guy at other end, playing guitar and losing vision in his right eye from the lights. I’m not fond of hats, but if you’re going to wear one it’s nice when it contributes to the image rather than fights it.

Laura belting out another song.

John Kelly on guitar.

And a few more from the evening…

It was a fun night and they had everybody there dancing along — can’t beat that. I’m looking forward to getting the video into Final Cut and seeing what I can do with it. My thanks to John, Laura, Jim, Allyn, and Tom for letting me capture a bit of the evening’s fun.

Technical drivel:

All shot with a Canon 5D Mark II, ISO 1600, white balance set at 4000, manual exposure. Just looking at the pics here, they’re all with the 70-200mm f/2.8L lens. Because I was shooting video most of the time the camera was on a monopod and the shutter is typically at 1/60, but when I switched to more still shooting that got cranked up a bit (1/100 or so). Shooting video is why I had the white balance set as well — normally I don’t really care because I set the white balance in Lightroom.

Most of these images were shot using Live View and manual focus. I had the camera rigged for video shooting and so I was doing all of the composition and focusing using the LCD screen coupled with the Zacuto viewfinder. Near the end of the night, when I was done with the video work, I switched to the regular viewfinder and auto-focus.

All processed with Lightroom with varying amounts of processing (mostly clarity +20, exposure, levels tweaks, and occasional vignetting).

Stone Mountain LIVE Christmas 2009

Dave — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:34:35 +0000

Photos from the December 19th, 2009 Stone Mountain LIVE Christmas show. This was one of 5 shows that spanned two weekends and are the final Stone Mountain LIVE shows for 2009.

More photos from the evening can be found at: [url]http://smac.dmg-photography.com/SML-Christmas-2009/[/url]

Special guest performers for this evening were the Burns Sisters, from Ithaca, NY. Marie, Annie, and Jeannie Burns sang a number of holiday tunes – some familiar, some not.

The Stone Mountain Boys were in fine form with a number of powerful instrumental interludes. Here Duke Levine, Kevin Barry, and Richard Gates jam on a holiday song behind a sea of mike stands. (Also performing, but not pictured are Sonny Barbato on piano/accordian and Billy MacGillivray on drums.)

Chris Cote, the Stone Mountain Boy’s vocal powerhouse, belted out some exciting and hilarious holiday tunes.

Carol, Chris, and the Burns Sisters performing “Blue Christmas”

——–

Technical: Canon 40D at ISO 1600 with a 70-200mm f/2.8L IS handheld. Exposures were typically 1/60 to 1/40 second, wide open at f/2.8 — and these were generally underexposed by at least 1/3 stop. Canon 1D Mark 2 at ISO 1600 with a 24-70mm f/2.8L handheld. Exposures centered around 1/60 second, but varied more than the telephoto shots.

2009 WAVM Telethon Favorites

Dave — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:37:23 +0000

The WAVM Beacon Santa Telethon raised close to (and, by now, probably over) $32,000 for local families in need. This was a 40-hour live television show produced by high school students. A difficult task for professionals, they showcase a variety of local talents in conjunction with an auction.

What follows are a few favorite photographs that I took during the telethon.

(Above: Mark Poulin, of HELP!, performs on stage on Friday evening.)

Each year Mr. Vic brings his young music class to sing some holiday songs.

A member of the Maynard Community Band gets into the spirit.

Mark Malcolm, children’s librarian at the Maynard Public Library, hosted a talent show and led the kazoo orchestra.

Connie and Vinnie Stigliani perform as part of the “Tap ‘n’ Tones”.

Violinist Jagan Singh accompanied Liz Pekkala in a Studio A performance of Christmas music.

Members of the famed “Senior Shakers” perform on-stage.

One of Miss Tricia’s dance studio students performing a ballet.

Laura Pratt belts out a tune performing on-stage with True West.

One of our more popular local hip-hop artists, T-Nova, performs on-stage Saturday night.

At 10pm on Saturday the Toy Auction gets underway.

One of the telethon hosts, Nick Jacques, singing in Studio A.

Here’s a good chunk of the team that made that $31,899.10 total possible. Seven hosts and their tech crews, who work in shifts to keep the 3 television studios and radio station operational during the 40-hour event.

The hosts have a little fun after the telethon winds down. (L-R: Samantha Howell, Jason Schomacker, Emily Witham, Nick Jacques, Rachel MacGillivary, Joey Tyler, Katrina Kohlman).

For way too many other photos of the telethon head over to: [url]http://wavm.org/telethon09/gallery.html[/url]

Veterans Day – Nov 11, 2009

Dave — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:59:45 +0000

For an expanded set of photos from Maynard’s 2009 Veterans Day Parade please visit my community site: [url]http://community.dmg-photography.com[/url]

To all that have served and are serving today, thank you.