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.

Last Thursday I was at a talk by Ken Livingstone organised by UCL Union’s Labour Society and just happened to have my camera with me, would you believe.

Unfortunately after a day doing other work, I didn’t have time to pick up a flash (which I’d forgotten to pack at 7am, unsurprisingly), and the light in the lecture theatre was poor. Although this isn’t a massive issue with my fast prime lens, my new 17-40mm f/4 L USM was the lens I wanted to use to get some nice wide shots of the audience and Ken on stage, so the photos aren’t the best I could have produced.

That said, I’m happy with most of the shots, which you can find in the gallery at the bottom of this post. My thoughts on his talk follow…

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