Since the usual guy was stuck doing the lighting (very well, I might add – if a little high-contrast for my taste!), I was asked to step in and shoot the annual UCOpera during its dress rehearsal last weekend.

Aside from enjoying myself by being able to listen to an opera while I worked, the production itself was fun to shoot. Although being a dress rehearsal there were still a couple of lighting issues (in the wrong place, not bright enough and so on!), there were quite a few scenes involving characters in one part of the stage being watched by characters in another – and with a 70-200mm f/2.8, this gives you a good opportunity to play around with what’s in focus and what’s not. Although this shot here has the main action in focus, I took a couple where this was reversed,  which worked well.

You can see more in this Flickr set – there’s not many, but I think they offer a good selection of what was on offer.

I took time out this evening from revision to pop along to Talking Politics with Eddie Izzard, where the infamous comedian talked for a short while about his own interest in politics – culminating in restating his intention to run for some political office, at least, in the next 10-15 years. Needless to say, the audience was behind him on this.

But the evening wasn’t about Eddie Izzard, for he was there to ask a few gentle questions of MPs Tessa Jowell and Ed Balls, both well-known Labour ministers. There was some talk about whether holding a costly Olympic Games amidst the recession is a good thing – resoundingly yes, Jowell said, when the Olympic site will have employed some 11,000 workers, and created hundreds of new apprenticeships – and also, at the very end, talk about twitter. Read the rest of this entry »