I took Isaac to the closing night of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park -- they are going to tear down the old buidlings and put up replacements by 2008.
In the Simson African Hall, one of the oldest sets of exhibits (see the painted diorama with giraffe at the end), they had signs up encouraging people to photograph their favorite exhibits. While I was taking this long shot of the hall for ambience and architecture, without flash, I caught this other photographer in mid-flash, providing both an appropriate "action" capture (well, I think so). and also giving me much better lighting on that section of the ceiling. Even though editing is allowed, I chose to leave all the weird colors and flare effects, especially since the carpet shows a pretty accurate dispersion pattern of the other person's flash.
I went to this place many times since I was a kid; I specifically wanted to take Isaac so he'd have a chance to see the old buildings and exhibits, so I didn't take as many (good) pictures as I might have ....
Minimal editing; moderate tone curve, sharpening, cropped a little tight to make it fit under 150k limit at higher JPEG quality.
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Thanks for the comments. Perhaps I should have titled it Flash Photographer Ruining My Shot. (Although the additional light probably made the ceiling look a bit better.)
I myself was impressed at capturing the flash -- the available exposure window must be pretty short. It's kind of like capturing a home run hitter at the moment the ball is in contact with the bat. Given the shutter-lag on my camera, it is a remarkable coincidence to me ....
Initial thoughts/My opinion While the ceiling was shown when it loaded the first time I thought: that's an interesting place of great leading lines and structure and I looked forward what would be at the end of the ceiling. Was disappointed when I finally looked at the harsh, blue flash and the peoples and chairs.
Content/Composition Of course there is action in this image due to the flash. However, this action and the place don't fit well in my eyes: the exhibit is a place of silence and contemplation, whereas the flash is an element of disturbance, harshness. Such a contrast might of course be an interesting compositional elements, but to me it did not work well in this case. That is probably due to the fact that the two elements are not well balanced and especially that the exhibition hall isn't too quiet due to the people. It's at that moment already very busy even without the flash photographer.
Something that might have worked better here is to focus on the movement of the people rushing through the hall: that's an often seen action in museums that is simply contradictionary to the intention of places like that.
Camera work -technically The image looks not sharp were it should be: only the upper portion of the ceiling is fine, the rest is a little too blurred. Was it a handheld shot? Exposure seem OK, maybe a tad too dark.
Digital Processing - Technical I'm honestly not a big fan of the blue hue of the flash: a flash is by itself already cold enough and the blue colour makes it even colder and also look too unnatural. I would thus have changed the colour digitally. Cropping works well, you might have considered rotating the image a bit clock-wise.
Fits the challenge Somehow yes, but to me it's more "disturbance" then action itself.
I understand what you are doing but the flash only annoys. the composition is really good with that ceiling and yes, as youv'e heard, th efocus is off. but altogether, its ok.
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