Orchestre Nouveau 25 July 2010

An ensemble of 38 musicians, conducted by Zach Tay presented two classical pieces at the Arrow on Swanston on the 25th July. They were:-

Tchaikovsky - Symphony No.1 in G minor, Op.13, and
Liszt - Piano Concerto No.2 in A major, Op.23.

While the house lights were pretty dim, I was very pleased to see them staying on throughout the concert. There were no colour cans like there were last time so the amount of light was challenging, especially for this fairly large team. No problems for the audiences though, thank God, because they were nice and close to the performers.


Many of the shots were taken outside my comfort zone, aka at speeds slower than I would have preferred.

This picture of the conductor (Zach) was taken at 160mm 1/80sec, challenging to produce a sharp picture for a moving object I thought. The picture below was taken at 200mm 1/30sec. Yep, you read it right - 1/30sec... And the picture below that was taken at 200mm 1/20sec... I was really asking for trouble! Not that I am trying to keep a low iso for low noise, iso was set to 1600 for all three shots. I was determined not to use flash since my shutter noise was more than enough a distraction already! :P

Anyway, I hope the movement (motion blur) communicates positively towards the picture and not negatively...

Thank you very much Zach for the opportunity. Very well done! Love to do it all over again!!



Since I was silly enough to try 1/20sec. Lets try 1/6sec (at 70mm) for a still object. Not a great picture but I am sure people who were there were horrified to see me shooting the sound desk which was in complete darkness... May be it was so dark they didn't see me altogether... :D

Here is a slideshow of the concert. Unfortunately, I have neither of the work that were performed so the backing track will be different. It is Igor Stravinsky's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in D - Capriccio. Enjoy!