Nativity Scene

As well as taking a group photo at my wife’s choir’s Christmas concert last Thursday night, I photographed the choir during the concert itself, mainly using a long lens (70-200mm f/2.8 VR) so that I could be discrete and still get tight crops of the choir.  At the interval I scouted around for some details with which to book-end the slideshow that I had in mind when taking the shots.

Essentially this was “shooting for the album” – a concept that gets promoted a lot by album suppliers who try to convince photographers that album design is a quick and easy one-hour task that need not be seen as a big time overhead.   The concept though has some merit even if the album you’re shooting for is just a web-album or a slideshow to music, as I was doing here, and whenever I have one of those in mind, I try to look for shots to open and close the slideshow with as I am photographing.

For instance at a wedding this would usually include an exterior shot of the church (or the bride’s house) to open, and a shot of the couple on their own to close.  On Thursday night I didn’t have time to take an exterior shot of St. Patrick’s College, and even if I did it was too much of a car park to make a nice photo.  I did notice a crib in one of the alcoves running along one side of the church, and it was to this I turned my attention at the interval.

I kept it simple and quick, using the ambient light, with the help of a high-ish ISO, a wide aperture, and a VR-assisted shutter speed, to keep plenty of light in the shot.  Because of the way the crib was lit, with tungsten spot lights in the ceiling above, the scene is quite contrasty.  It would have perhaps been interesting to see how a HDR would have worked on this to cater with the high dynamic range of the scene and bring some detail back into the blacks, and even a better option would have been to add a little fill light from near the camera’s position.

I tried neither of course, and instead took this shot which is virtually straight from the camera, and a slightly wider shot showing a bit more of the crib.  I used one to open the slideshow and the other to close it.

If you have a spare 3 minutes 20 seconds you can watch the slideshow for yourself, and if you wish to hear an example of the choir singing make sure to turn up the volume.