AC/DC fans

This photo was taken at a friend’s wedding in October 2008, and captures a humourous moment in the night that I really like.  It was just after the band starting playing some AC/DC, and some avid fans amongst the male guests rolled up their trouser legs and took to the floor with their air guitars.   Cue my shot.

As a colour image, the picture doesn’t work so well so I converted it to black and white in Aperture.  That allowed me more room to boost the contrast, bring up some of the detail in the legs (i.e. hair!) and recover more of the specular highlights in the shoes.

Taken out of context, the image is probably slightly confusing to the viewer as they try to figure out what is going on in the shot.  I hope the title (AC/DC fans) clarifies the situation and adds to the humour of the shot.

In general I’ve found that entering wedding shots in the camera club competitions isn’t such a good idea – for reasons I haven’t quite figured out yet most judges comment that wedding photography doesn’t tend to do well in club competition, but no one has yet to explain why.  Anyway I took a chance with this shot (as it’s not obviously a wedding shot) and entered it in the December 2008 round of the Dublin Camera Club winter league as a monochrome print and to my delight it was awarded maximum marks.  It has been retained for the Finals this week where a judge will select the best monochrome print of the year – I’ll be interested to see if it fares as well with that (most likely different) judge when the marks are awarded.  Hopefully it does!

Update: It didn’t!