Symphony Hall, Boston, MA

My wife and I went to Symphony Hall in Boston, MA last night to see the final Annie Lennox show before she heads back to the UK.
We had great member seats in the first balcony VERY close to the stage. The show was phenomenal and every seat was filled!

We also had the honor of seeing Rosie O'Donnell who showed up for the show too with camera in hand about 4th row from the stage. This picture is hers and was posted on her own blog which you can read here. I emailed her blog site to see if she could share more of those photos she took. We'll see if she is the one reading/posting or if she has a staff.

Now I got a little rant to get out. I hate the fact that ALL venues don't allow, or at least list, no recording devices or cameras but regardless of what show you go to, there are MANY with cameras in hand and snapping throughout the show, some even with flash! I don't get it. So, here I am, I didn't bring my camera thinking I didn't want to walk back 3 blocks to put it back in the car if they didn't allow it, and there are many there who got in with it.

Next time, regardless of what the venue says, I'm going to take the risk. This show was incredible and I can only imagine what kinds of pictures people got. Considering how close we were too, it would've been an awesome photo session!!

Fun with Filters

A friend of mine asked me to write an article about digital photography filters. At first, my thoughts were that they weren't needed for digital cameras as they are for film cameras. In most cases, I still believe this is true but after doing some pretty decent research on it, some of the filters they provide do enhance photography for digital pictures.

Now we all know the power of photo editors today. They provide endless amounts of alterations for any of your photos, yes, even the blurry ones! Think about this though; what about the initial photo that you wanted to capture in a specific way? What if you took the picture with your digital camera and there was glare or certain sections of your scene were darker? Well, with editing you could always alter that sections brightness/contrast, color spectrum or more but all that sometimes takes a considerable amount of time to make it blend with the entire photo and look unmodified.

This is where the use of digital lenses come in! Applying one of these to you current lens would alleviate the need to modify anything. There are a few that are recommended for use and they're listed in these resource links below for further information. I'll be exploring some of these myself soon. I'm especially interested in the polarizing and UV filter lenses.

Also, remember if you've made changes to your camera's configuration to accomodate for some internal camera filtering, know where you left your previous settings. If you've had them configured manually for a specific scene and forgot what they were and just go out and shoot your next scene, you'll run into major issues! So, along with exploring your filters, ALWAYS 'reset' your digital camera to normal default shooting settings. Most digitals have an 'auto' mode or a mode that will allow for general use.

Filter Reference links:
Photo.Net
Digital Photography For What Its Worth
Nature Photographers
Adorama.Com (shows you with a picture what the filters do)