Buckingham Palace Poetry

Highlight: Free viewing of the Leonardo Di Vinci exhibition

Lowlight: Not being able to stay all day and do the workshop.

Fill in: The fabulous Joelle Taylor was doing a Poetry Society workshop at The Queen's Gallery in Buckingham Palace, where an exhibition of Di Vinci's anatomical drawings were on display. As I rarely get time to peruse the art galleries of London it was a real treat to get to see this exhibition for free. The images were being used as an inspiration for the Poetry workshop and I was to capture the workshop in action and the young poets at work. It was an amazing building and the light, although dark, very atmospheric so it was easy to get evocative images.
Tech spec: The galleries were a saturated blue, red or green so I had to ensure the compositions made the most of this without taking over the point of the image. The files also need careful colour correcting in the post processing using the histogram. I used an 85mm F1.4 most of the time to get as much light as possible onto the CCD without turning up the ISO, which would have aggravated the noise with such saturated colours. Even so I was still on ISO 1600-3200. I had to make sure the exposure was spot on, but even then used the NEF files to reduce hotspots from the spotlights. With high contrast scenes like these I always expose for the shadows and use the NEFs to bring back the highlights. Just like the old days of film - expose for the shadows, print for the highlights. Nothing changes.

For more on the exhibition visit:
The Queen's Gallery Leonardo Di Vinci Exhibition website

For more on the workshop by Joelle visit:
The Poetry Society Slambassadors Website