When I first arrived at noon, there was barely anyone there (probably everyone was at church). I was able to take pictures from all angles around the center stage with my 100-400 L + 30D combo.
As you can see, a metal bar surrounds the stage to prevent the performers from accidentally falling into the reflecting pool in front of City Hall. Since I had full access from 180 degrees, it wasn't much of a problem positioning my camera over this bar or using selective focus to completely blur it out. The above 2 photos are of Irish bagpipe players.
This set of photos of the Cass Irish Dancers was taken at around 3 PM. Now there was a ton of people elbow to elbow, some with kids on their shoulders, and a bevy of professional photographers who had already staked out strategic places around the stage (where the bars offered the least compositional interference) and were not budging from their positions.
I struggled to get a good vantage point. One shooter left his choice spot and I promptly took it as my own. However, I soon found out that I was too close to the stage and that the dancers would often move beyond the closest focusing distance of my 100-400L.
Hence, most of the photos I took were when the dancers retreated to the rear of the stage for some routines. That means that I missed out on 90% of the shots. My lense was to too long up close!
Plus these dancers were jumping, pirouetting, and just doing all manner of crazy things, which made it truly difficult for me to use my spot-meter + center-focus-point only + press focus button + recompose method of nailing the focus. I switched to auto focus and it worked a lot better than I thought. I just framed the composition and let my 30D focus computer do the rest. I'd say that the 30D only focused on something irrelevant 10% of the time.Next time I'll bring my 28-105L (I didn't bring it this time because I had wanted to travel light).
Anyhow, most of my shots got accepted, so I'm happy. I have a few more from this shoot that I need to cull through. If those get accepted as well, I'll be sure to post them here for your viewing pleasure.
Update 20090505: More of the same set just accepted.
Irish drummers drumming along with the bagpipes.
Caribbean belly dancing.
More belly dancing.
