We are so very proud of Bradley right now.  We attended the junior honours evening tonight and watched Bradley get a certificate for outstanding academic achievement for the year! How cool is that?!

So of course, I have to show off how clever he is and post some photos of him at the ceremony

He was so shy on stage this time, so very different from the play from a few weeks ago.  This time he just kept looking at the floor on stage… he hardly looked up!!

I thought I’d also write a few tips that I’ve learnt the last few years of taking photos of the kids on stage.  I saw quite a few parents struggling with their DSLR’s this evening, and hopefully this helps someone.

1. Sit on the end of the row so that you can stand to take the photos without irritating all the other parents.  Tonight, I didn’t actually stand, but I was sitting on the end of a row so I could move my chair a bit to get a good angle.

2.  Try not use your flash.  Generally you’re sitting so far back in the audience anyway, so a flash isn’t going to travel that far, and you do want to use the ambient light to get depth in your image.

3.  The lighting on stage is generally quite good… in pockets… so you can set your ISO, so that your shutter speed is 50 or higher (any slower and I find that the kids are blurred because they don’t stand still).  Tonight my ISO was set at 1250 to get the shutter speed fast enough to take the photo.  I shoot in Aperture mode if you’re wondering, I find it faster to change the settings especially in these kind of situations.

4. If the colouring is crap, like these ones were… change the photos to B&W to make editing faster.  At my son’s school, the lighting on stage is coloured, so you get some pink faces and some orange… there’s not much consistency so fixing it is a nightmare… hence the B&W (oh and to mask the colour scheme somewhat for privacy purposes).  And I also change it because I prefer B&W when I’m telling a story because I think your eyes tend to focus more on the intended subject than being distracted by coloured backrounds etc.