We spent all day yesterday and most of the night attending the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo…a marvelous three hour+ performance of precision marching and bands as well as dancing and gymnastics by groups from both Canada and countries including the France, Switzerland, Estonia, Britain and the US. It was held in the Halifax Metro Centre and was wonderful both for the acts and their precision interleaving so that there was never even 10 seconds when there was not some event going on…the groups entered and arranged themselves in the dark side as another act was going on at the other end.
What a wonderful photo opportunity this would have been with all the color and pageantry except for one thing…on the tickets and plastered over all the entrance doors was the notice: No Cameras, Video, or Recording Permitted. Now, as a photographer, I respect an organization’s desire to retain ownership of any images, etc. etc. But it turned out the notice was unenforced. There was an endless string of flashes coming from the audience across the way from us and no doubt on our side as well! I kept expecting the ubiquitous ushers to at least warn people if not confiscate cameras or escort violators from the performance. Nothing of the sort…even when a particularly delicate acrobatic performance was preceded by a warning to avoid any flashes for fear it would endanger the performers, the end of the announcement was immediately followed by a flash.
Aside from being irked that I was denied opportunities that some others in the audience blatantly took, I was particularly amused by the ignorance displayed by these folks firing off their little digital pocket cameras from hundreds of feet back from their subjects. Point source light such as a flash diminishes with the square of the distance from the source…at 4′ away you have only 1/4 the light you had at 2′ and at 20′ you have only 1% of the light you had at 2′. That is why it is so difficult to get a good flash picture of a group of people viewed diagonally…the ones nearest are significantly brighter that the ones twice as far away…there is nothing a camera can do to correct for such an exposure difference.
At the Tattoo the photo opportunities would have been many…the lighting provided was magnificent and fully bright enough to take pictures even at slow speed settings WITH NO NEED FOR FLASH. For all I know, there may have been astute photographers who were doing just that. Why include the overexposed heads of the folks in the row ahead when they can be in silhouette? All the disturbing effect of the flash both to the performers and the audience can be eliminated. Every digital camera I have examined has a way to shut off the flash either by programming or, lovely feature on my Cannon Sure Shot, just not flipping the flash head up. Usually, then, the camera makes sure it adjusts the exposure for the object of interest rather than relying on the control of the shut-off time adjustment of the flash intensity. Admittedly the user has to have read the manual enough to discover how to do this…and with modern complex cameras this can be a daunting task.
The point of this rant is to encourage people to learn their cameras. Perhaps we should have the equivalent of the now mandatory requirements to have a Canadian Pleasure Craft Operator’s Card which proves you have learned the basics including the rules of the road for boats…perhaps we should call it the Pleasure Camera Operator’s card!
[any of you local to Montague, PEI are welcome to my first photography class which will include this flash instruction but is focused this week on composition. It runs Mondays from 1 to 4 at the Artisans on Main Studio and costs $10]
I have attended many events at the Metro Center and even though almost every ticket states the “no camera or recording device” rule, I find it rarely enforced, The only enforcement I ever see is someone at the door asking you. I have time and time again taken a camera or video camera to a concert there and walked it right through the door in my jacket and never once have I had an issue even after staff members have witnessed me taping something. I watched someone in the lower bowl using audio recording hardware during Bryan Adams.
I think the “no camera” rule done more as a formality but when it comes down to it, simply, nobody really cares. I just wouldn’t try to sell anything you’ve taped.