I’ve just come from a bloody awesome night of poetry, music and spoken word, and like a total nerd I decided to immediately blog about it. I was lucky enough to be one of the artists performing at the thing – called the Kaleidoscope Tightrope (which is fiendishly hard to spell) – but I also took a few snaps during the rest of the show. Here they are.
Props to Scott Sneddon aka Darkwing Dubs aka Scotty aka What actually is your name now? for organising such a fun and varied night of performance. Highlights included Matt Hsu jamming on his trumpet from atop a table, Lucy Fox and Laura Trenery showing us their mad tatts, and James Halloran singing a vaudeville opera.
Thanks to Metro Arts for the venue and Brisbane Festival for being awesome. If you haven’t been to any Brisbane Festival events yet, it’s on until the 28th September. Get involved! Metro Arts will be hosting another poetry night next Wednesday, as part of their Basement Late Night series, curated by another differently excellent local poet. Seriously there is so much to do in this city. I can’t keep up.
Sleep time. Good night.
PS. I’ve only just started using a DSLR (embarrassingly, seeing I work at a camera shop), and this was my first foray into low-light shooting. So, if any photographers out there have any tips/comments on how I went, my comment section is open!
Kaitlyn Blythe 
The shots are great. The only thing I’d change is the white balance. Everyone’s a bit too orange for my taste. The microphone is a good place to find a neutral grey colour to balance off. That’ll usually swing things too far and you’ll need to warm the shot up a little, but it’ll get the tint right.
I’d normally suggest shooting manual; setting the lens at a good balance between wide open & sharp, the shutter speed at 1/focal-length and then using the ISO to control the final exposure but you managed to get a really sharp shot at 1/15 so what ever you’re doing keep that up. 🙂
Thanks Adam! These are great tips. I know what you mean about everything being too orange, but I wasn’t sure how to fix that. I’ll try your advice on the white balance next time.
When you shoot indoor events, do you usually use a tripod or shoot handheld? I shot from hand this time, and most of the shots came out blurry, but couldn’t be stuffed carrying a tripod with me. What do you think?
I use Adobe Lightroom which has great controls for white balance and a bunch of other really useful functions. I highly recommend that or Adobe Camera Raw (which Lightroom is basically a different front end for). To get the best out of these tools you need to be shooting raw which is a good idea anyway.
I shoot hand held. The poetry slams and gigs in Canberra tend to fill up the venues so there’s no room for tripods anyway. Shooting with a fixed shutter speed at or faster than the focal length of your lens goes a long way to keeping the shots sharp.
Awesome, I’ll see about getting Lightroom. I’ve heard good things about it. Thanks for this advice – I want to shoot more slams and readings, so anything to get the best photo. Cheers Adam!
I was gutted that I couldn’t make it last Wednesday…and next Wednesday I’ll be in Sydney! But I did go to the first night of this series with Ghostboy as host and can vouch that the late night poetry basement is something special 🙂
Hoping to get out again for the final Wednesday.
PS. No photos of you??
Haha, I thought about taking a selfie with my DSLR while I was up there, but it seemed too awkward.
Wish I could’ve gone to Ghostboy’s night! Hoping to catch next week’s Basement Late Night, but I’ll be in NSW for the last one! We’ll just miss each other.