Rain on the plain ...

Well ... there hasn't been too much to do since I committed myself to twiddling my thumbs until Strobist Lighting 102 really kicks in. It actually started five days ago with the first posting: Strobist: L102: Light Controls Overview. This is gonna be great.

Until then, here's a little shoot I did on Thursday. It was graduation night at AHS a school that, by stupidity, flagrant disregard for human life ... er ... tradition, holds its graduation ceremony outside behind the school. Now this wouldn't normally be a concern if Minnesota was known for its incessantly consistent and pristine weather patterns. But, alas, it is not. This time of year offers a complete minestrone of climes never accurately predicted and always leaving one anxious and languished over the outcome.

None-the-less, we're having graduation with the potential of tornadoes and golf-ball sized hail. See?
We're in for a latter day Woodstock. Except the headliners are droning school admins and student honorees. On the bright side, we have a lot more places to take a piss in private.
The festivities were interrupted for about 20 minutes with some good soaking rain and 35 mph winds ... no hail or tornadoes.

So, we started with the processional a little late ... which played into our advantage as the School Principal cut a choral number and an orchestra number to keep us on track (can make it home in time to catch a rerun of Shark).

I got some nice pictures of the graduate and the family but, won't bore you with them here. Here are a couple of shots reaped from the event that I was pleased with.

I was shooting with my D70s fitted with my 28-105mm. My SB-800 fitted to the shoe set to TTL BL. There was still a good amount of ambient light to shoot with and the flash helped bolster ill-cast shadows even at 30 feet away. When I had time, I used Manual exposure mode otherwise shot in Aperture mode set at f/8.0. Seemed to work well with the distance from the subject.

i shoot nikon