Mission accomplished. That is the feeling you have as parents when you have brought both your children through school. Big Boy had his graduation day yesterday. Granted, it is only one step down the road, but for The Significant Other and myself it still feels like the successful end of an era, 15 years after Big Girl started elementary school.
Graduation took place in the historic St. Laurentius Church of Altdorf (near Nuremberg). Located centrally in the old town, it was built in the 14th century as a three-aisled Gothic basilica. The church building was largely rebuilt until 1755 and furnished with Baroque elements. The families had assigned seats and we where sitting in one of the back rows on the first gallery. To capture the action below and far away, I used the 40-150mm F/2.8 zoom on my Olympus OM-D E-M1X, holding it high overhead and looking through the tilted LCD screen. But the cam did its job, giving me pin sharp images at 1/250 sec and ISO 800.
The photo above of the church interior and Big Boy’s after-show portrait below show the versatility of the 7-14mm F/2.8 ultra wide angle zoom from Olympus.
Doing portraits with an Ultra Wide Angle lens, even at the far end of the zoom range /14mm), can be used to create some fun, slightly distorted portraits when shooting close to the subject. While when using the same focal length at some distance, you get the standard portraits, as seen in the photograph above of Big Boy with his proud sister.
After the ceremony the families had time for themselves on this beautiful and hot summer day. We went to a nice beer garden on the historic Ludwigskanal. In the evening, graduation day continued with a party on the school grounds and a fun final get-together of students, parents and teachers.
That was the time for my 17mm F/1.2 prime on the PEN-F. I love the documentary character of the lens, as well as the low-light capabilities. In the dance scene below in front of the student-teacher-band, I dialed in a slow shutter speed of 1/6 sec to capture the movement of the dancers. Which in turn resulted in a narrow aperture of f/16 which produced the nice starbursts from the lights.
Around 11pm the party ended. But only for parents and teachers. The Class of 2019 moved on to another location for the private part of graduation festivities. When we got up this morning, Big Boy was in his bed. Mission accomplished.
Wish you a great weekend!
Marcus
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