High Flying Duo: 16/20
As per previous posts, I think circus photography is enjoyable but very challenging. Sitting in an audience area, you have no control over positioning yourself and have to avoid the heads of the people in front of you, nor do you have control over the lights. In addition, due to the fast action of most of the acts one needs to use a fast shutter speed in a dark tent.
I felt the better set of images was of two performers doing aerial acrobatics. The light was better than in the earlier trapeze act but it had the additional challenge of trying to get two fast moving girls in focus. For the feature shot above, I used a shutter speed of 1/1000 with an open aperture of f/2.8 and ISO 2500. The 70-200 mm lens was zoomed to 108mm, which was mounted on my Canon R5ii. (The images below used the same shutter speed and open aperture but ISO 3200).
Not having been out much with the camera, nor having made inroads into the editing backlog, I decided to focus on circus images for the club competitions. I choose a few of the images from this set to enter in club competitions (digital and print) in January and February. You don't often see circus images in club competitions, so I was hoping that the judge would like seeing something different. Unfortunately, the three different judges didn't appreciate the novelty of circus photography the way I did, or appreciate the challenges entailed. The scores I achieved ranged from 13 to 16 out of 20. Unfortunately, the 13 and 14 were at the lower end of the scoring range on the night.
Look One Hand: 13/20 (the judge suggested to get rid of the strap on the left - but to me this was context and part of the story. Sometimes the judge wanting pristine can be frustrating. Personally, I would have questioned the dirty foot being prominent and timing in respect to arm positioning of the hand that loosened from the strap)
High Splits: 14/20 (the judge didn't like the harshness caused by the flashlight!!! I wonder what flash would reach that distances, and surely he should realise the danger of using flash photography during a performance such as this at a circus. Flash was not used and I had to work within the constraints of the circus spotlights)
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