On the ball

Before getting into the detail of this shot, allow me quickly direct you to my “stock clearance” sale, in the form of a game of “Photo Bingo”, where I am selling off, at cost price, mounted images I put together for Peoples’ Photography exhibition a few weeks ago.  Your support is much appreciated!  Now, back to this shot…

The temptation, when I got the chance to wander around an almost empty Croke Park earlier in the week, was to take photographs of the view outside – the pitch and the stands – but having done so, I also looked for photographs to be found inside.  When I wandered into one of the many bars around the premium level, I set about looking for an angle at which to shoot it.

There were a couple of things that made photographing the space difficult.  Firstly, at a couple of places in the bar there are odd shaped columns going from floor to ceiling (you can see one in the frame with the sign for the bar on it), and these could get in the way quite easily.  There are also many high tables spread throughout the bar, and finding an angle that isn’t obscured by these was a challenge.

When you shoot in digital format however, photographs are free, so I just took a lot of test shots from different positions as I wandered around the bar, and waited for one that looked like it was workable.

That shot came when I lowered the camera position right down near the floor.  With the camera at that height, the floor picked up reflections of the spot lights in the ceiling and I felt gave a nice balance to the scene.   The reflective floor also mirrored those tables and to some extent the column, helping to make them features of the photograph rather than obstacles to it.

The remaining challenge was not so much exposure as white balance.  The room is lit partly by diffused light coming through the windows at both sides, and partly by the halogen spot lights in the ceiling.  In fact, the exposure is such that the predominant light in the image is from those spot lights.  An additional complication though is that the reflective floor is bouncing much of the light, both natural and artificial, back up onto the ceiling, but in doing so its colour causes quite a strong colour cast on that light.

So how do you balance for all these light sources?

An advantage of shooting in RAW format is total control over white balance after the shot has been taken, and this is such a scenario where you want that.  Having imported the shot into Aperture, I was able to try different colour temperatures to get the white balance as I wanted it, so instead of correcting for any one of the light sources in the shot, I just judged what I thought looked best, which was a colour temperature that gives a nice warmth to the scene, while trying to maintain the correct white balance as best I can on the back wall.

I would say I probably ended up balancing mostly for the daylight outside, but with the shot being lit mostly by the halogen light (and it’s warmer reflection from the floor), the photograph looks warm, as the room did when I was there.

As a stand alone image, this photograph is lacking something, but it would make a great location for a portrait.