New York Arabic Orchestra benefit concert for Japan

I was commissioned to do a video shoot about 3 hours before the event.
I arrived at the site five minutes before the start time. I was able to shoot
about 45 minutes of video before camcorder battery died.

The show was still going on, so I decided to shoot still photos. I was in
a pew in second column on left side of church. I could not move from
the position without disturbing the patrons watching the concert.

So instead of using a stand, I quickly used the video tripod as a stand.

Strobe setting for second curtain flash to capture motion of musicians.
Used an bounce flash technique I learned from Niel Van Niekerk.

Strobe was bounced of a white area of stone wall on camera left.
Furthermore, the strobe was gelled to match the hot lights on the subjects.

Ambient light was measured using a light meter and off camera strobe

was used as fill light. Shutter speed was very low, under 1/15 second,
but compensated by camera's image stabilization.

Flash triggering was done using camera's built-in wireless triggering
instead of radio triggers.

Light level was so low, camera could not auto focus. All shots
were take with manual focus. Luckily, the viewfinder has focus
confirmation indicator.

Camera was set to auto white balance and corrected in post processing
using Olympus Viewer2 software. In addition fine tuning of exposure,
contrast, picture mode and lens correction was also done in Viewer2.


Equipment used at shoot:

• Olympus FL-36R strobe 
• Mounted on stand with adapter.
• Gel strobe using Cinch Strap
• Polaris Meter to measure ambient light 
• Lens: 40-150mm zoom

New York Arabic Orchestra raised over $1600 in donations to help victims of the Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan. 100% of the proceeds will be donated to the Japan relief. 

• Bassam Saba - a leading figure of Arabic music
• April Centrone - Percussionist
• Nobuko Miyazaki - shinobue player
• Sonny Ochiai Ensemble, Classical Okinawan music
• New York Taiko Aikokai

The benefit concert was held at The Park Avenue Christian Church.

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