Challenging indoor shoot

I spent last night working on another assignment from my church. We have a dinner before church every Wednesday night and they wanted some photographs for the website. My challenge was to find a shot that tells the story of Wednesday night dinner on its own, as they will probably only use 1 or 2 of the photographs on the website. The other challenge was the lighting. One half of the dining hall has a huge stained glass wall making for challenging WB conditions but provides enough light at sunset to shoot at 400 ISO. The other half of the hall (where most of the people are) is very dark and 1600 ISO barely pulls the shots out. Even when it does, the noise level is very high. All I have right now is the onboard flash, but even with an external flash I can't see it filling any significant portion of this dining hall. I used my kit lens for this shoot which is f/3.5 on the fast end.
So, what should I do? I can try to get closeups of people with the flash, and see if they can live with the dark background. I can try to only take photographs on the bright side of the dining hall and adjust the white balance in the post processing. I can also try to save up and get the f/1.8 50mm lens that only costs about $75. With the increased speed of this lens I might be able to get the shots on the darker side of the dining hall at a lower ISO. The only problem with that solution is I am not sure it will work. One other idea that I almost forgot about is to shoot these photographs in the second dining hall. I never eat down there, so I forgot they serve dinner in two different places, and the second one has much better lighting.
I am going to get some samples of the ones I took last night to the people requesting them so they can give me some ideas on composition. Hopefully I get the shots they are looking for next week.

Headshots

I am helping my church as the assistant photographer. My first assignment was to shoot some headshots of various people for the website. These are not typical thumbnail shots as they wanted high detail photographs they could manipulate and use as the page header for each respective ministry. To say this was a learning experience is an understatement. I spent some time on the day before practicing on my daughter in the living room. Lighting was the big challenge. I don't have an external flash and I hate the harsh appearance I get when using the onboard flash for portraits. I used a coffee filter to diffuse the light which worked fairly well in my living room. Unfortunately, this did not work nearly as well at the church even though the background was almost identical. The shots came out very dark even though they looked properly exposed on the LCD and the histograms looked OK (EDIT - A second look at the histograms shows they do NOT look OK. I can see a large spike in the middle and a smaller spike on the left with nothing on the right. Clearly underexposed. This is something I need to remember when I set up my practice shots next time.) All I can say is thank heavens for RAW. I was easily able to correct the brightness level and the Canon software did a good job of balancing the skin colors.
Besides purchasing an external flash (which I cannot afford right now), I am not sure what I would do different next time. I definitely would shoot RAW+JPG for important items like this. That was a life saver. I might overexpose by at least +1 and maybe even +2 next time if I used the diffuser. I don't want to go to far as it is easier to pull detail out of a dark photo. If I overexpose too much and blow out the highlights, there is no saving the detail from that.
I am also deliberating on whether I made the best lens choice. My kit lens is faster than my zoom, so I might get better results from the lighting. I try to avoid shooting with the kit lens at 55mm as I think images are a little soft (I have not done tests to prove this though). Benefits to using this lens would be that it lets in more light and the flash would have been closer to the subject. Drawbacks would be somewhat less depth of field than using the 75-300. I need to think about this some more. It might be time to make the homemade softboxes from the photography lessons on www.morguefile.com and use those instead.

Fun at a local carnival

Girl playing bottle game (PP)
Originally uploaded by Chris in KC

We had a fun time at a local carnival today. The sky was overcast which provided for some nice lighting. Even so I had to change the white balance back and forth between shady and cloudy depending if the subject was under a tent or out in the open. There were lots of opportunities to catch people doing fun and interesting things. Even better, I was able to get several photographs of people in relaxed and unposed positions. The Kansas City Police Department had some of their best stuff at the carnival such as a couple of race cars, their bomb robot and their SWAT vehicle. Overall, it was a great opportunity to take photographs of things as they happened. This required me to change my settings on the fly and adjust to changing conditions which can only help me become more familiar with my camera.

Here are a few of the photographs I liked best. There are more on my Flickr portfolio (see the link on the right).

Photographing a subect from multiple perspectives

Loader001
Originally uploaded by Chris in KC

I found a good photography course online at www.morguefile.com. I started the class several months ago with my Kodak Z612, but I kind of fizzled out because I ran into limitations with the camera's settings. I figured it would be good to revisit these lessons with my Canon XT. Lesson one has two assignments: take an abstract photograph, and shoot a subject from multiple perspectives. I already did the abstract lesson a second time and this is my effort to get multiple different perspectives of a subject.
In the past I have spent a lot of time searching for just the right subject, which often meant I did not around to actually doing the lesson because I never found the right subject. This time I left my office with the thought that I WOULD find a subject before I got home. As I walked out of my office I saw this CASE loader that has been sitting in our parking lot for several months. In spite of the big pile of dirt around this, the loader is actually smack dab in the middle of an asphalt parking lot. We don't always get to choose the subject we are shooting, so I tried to make the best of what I had and shoot it in an interesting way.

As an added element, I used my 75-300mm zoom so I could get some practice with it. Even 70mm is way up close and personal. For several of these shots I had to be 100ft away or more. I was hoping for more bokeh in some of them, but I guess I can work on that technique later on.

Here are the rest of the photographs from this series. The full size versions can be seen by clicking on the photos below:

Introduction

I have decided to become a better photographer. Unfortunately, just deciding something does not make it true. The pictures I have taken over the years are only snapshot quality and are mostly of family events or vacation landmarks. Granted, the family snapshots are of interest to the family members and many may become treasured over the years for the sentimental/historical value.
I now desire, however, to appeal to a broader audience. I hope to learn how to take photographs that will be appreciated by a viewer who does not know me at all. I also hope to find some way to earn some money on the side with photography. I have no desire to become a full time photographer (that would make it too much work). I don't want to open a studio for portrait photography and I don't really want to shoot weddings. These are all fine uses of a photographer's skills, but they don't exactly mesh up with my interests in photography. I do like the idea of becoming a stock photographer and selling pictures that way. I also have a romantic idea about taking "art" quality pictures that I can sell at art shows.
All of this is pie-in-the-sky thinking at the moment because my current level of photographic skill is no where good enough for me to sell pictures to anyone. I have been reading books, investing in some basic equipment, and above all, shooting lots of pictures. But, my current approach feels very choatic and unorganized. It is difficult for me to track my progress and above all, it is difficult to get feedback from anyone else as most of these pictures just sit on my PC or on a CD.
So, this blog has two purposes initially. The first is to help me organize my journey into better photography and be able to see my progress as I improve (hopefully). The second is the scariest part, which is to put my work into the public forum where others can see it and criticize it. I am extremely critical of my own work, and I almost never take a picture I am happy with. This makes me very hesitent to show my work to anyone else. But, I also recognize that I need input from other people on how my photographs can be improved, so I am throwing caution to the wind and taking this blog public.
Input from everyone is welcome, even if you have never held a camera in your life. Good photographs are appreciated by everyone, even if they don't know why. And usually people can tell why they don't like a photograph. So, criticize away (but try to be nice, eh?) and let the journey begin.