A Brand New Experience

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Well.....I hardly know where to begin so I guess I'll just plunge right in.

A friend of mine is beginning her career as a photographer.  About 1 1/2 years ago she raffled a free portrait sitting.  A body builder won the raffle and she has since then become an acquaintance of his.  He asked her to photograph a competition that took place today. 

I offered to go with her to give her moral support for this first-time endeavor.

Once we got there and saw the lay of the land, I shamelessly asked her if she minded if I took some photos too.

Being completely unprepared, I encountered a few difficulties:

1)  The venue was dark.  

2)  Because I didn't know I'd be taking pictures, I didn't bring my off-camera flash, so I was limited to using the built-in flash--which left a lot to be desired.  

3)  I bumped the iso up to a high number which I knew would render grain in the image because of the darkness of the scene.

4)  I'm experiencing some shutter lag with my camera which will require a trip to the repair shop, I'm afraid

5)  The shutter-lag caused some of my images to be soft, or downright blurry.

6)  I couldn't figure out what white balance to use--I experimented with several, all of which fell short of being "good enough"

7)  The background was ugly

But...

Out of all the images I took, I only kept about 20.  

They're not sharp, but it was still good practice.  

Turning them into b/w definitely improved them. 

By the way, for any of you who might be new to my blog, these images are waaaayyy outside my comfort zone and not typically the types of portraits I do.  But as I mentioned above, it was a new experience and not totally unpleasant.