Who wants to visit a machine shop?

Silly question.  A bunch of photographers, that's who.  All the following were taken using existing light - no flash or special lights.  You learn to appreciate the randomness of a shop, the precision of the product and the patina of the old machines.

Weekend Concerts

On Friday, we went to the Aeolian Hall in London.  It's a great little 300 seat theatre located in an old fire station.  We've been there several times and so far flash free photography is overtly allowed.  We bought our Jill Barber concert tickets well in advance and got front row seats, albeit quite close to the extreme edge of the audience.  Maybe the house allows photography because they know what challenges their presents to photographers.  Usually "ghoulish" lighting comes from below.  No so on Friday.  With two strong spot lights on the star of the show, it was only when light reflected up from the stage that the overall lighting was adequate for images.  FYI, for those of you who may be interested my ISO for the following three shots was 1000, 6400 and 3200 and all were hand held.  As for the music, Jill Barber is a jazz singer.  She and her 5 piece band play mostly her own songs.  Watch out for her, she's very good.

As I said the lighting was a challenge.  Fortunately, I caught this near black out moment.  I liked it instantly.

On Saturday night, we were at the Aylmer Old Town Hall for an Aylmer Performing Arts Council production of Danny Michel.  The Old Town Hall seats about 200 and has absolutely fabulous acoustics.  I'm always amazed at how much sound gear some bands bring and don't use simply because they don't need it.  Anyways, the lighting for this concert was very conducive for photography.  The music was good too.  A singer songwriter who now plays with International Space Station Commander Chris Hadfield.  (Does Major Tom - Ashes to Ashes come to mind?)  Too bad we didn't have the Commander in the house last night but the drummer and base player filled out Danny's sound quite well.  Technical stuff - all images were at ISO 3200.

Port Burwell

Last night I got out all my coldest weather wear...long johns, two pairs of wool socks, snow pants, wool sweater, down jacket, snowmobile mitt/glove combo, hot packs for mitts.  Saturday's high was -10.  Up before dawn on Sunday and the temperature was -4.  What to do?  I put on all the stuff.  I was headed to Lake Erie where in the past week, winds out of the south had been driving sand so hard that visitors just stayed in their cars.  This morning was supposed to be sunny.  Well Mother Nature thought that I needed an overcast morning in which to shoot.  The winds were pretty strong but no sand was blowing nor water as the lake was frozen for as far as I could see.

Now grey skies present problems for photographers.  "When shooting in cloudy conditions, compose your image to limit the sky to a minimum."  Well I thought that the speckled sky gave me just enough contrast and a little bit of blue to break that rule.