Photo gallery: My nephew's 6th birthday

I thought I would take a break from going on about lens distortion or some other potentially dry topic and just share some photos.

I took photos at my nephew's birthday party at a place called Pump It Up that looked ridiculously fun for kids (and adults, if only we were allowed... if only). It's basically an indoor facility with a bunch of inflatable jumpy-type things.




Two main factors contributed to making this event a bit challenging from a photography perspective.

1. Bad/low light
2. Fast moving objects (i.e. kids)
   

Not really the greatest combination of factors. Additionally, the really high ceiling made bouncing flash off of it not a very viable solution, and I don't really like using direct flash because I don't like the harshness it adds to the photos. What did help was using a fast lens -- the fastest lens I have right now (on loan) is a Nikon 50mm 1.4, so I tried using that as much as possible. I also shot mostly in shutter priority mode to help reduce blurry shots by choosing a minimum shutter speed of about 1/125 of a second. 1/125 isn't nearly fast enough to freeze all kinds of action, but given the bad light situation I couldn't really go faster than that without having the photos come out too dark from lack of sufficient light. So it was a bit of a balancing act. The following photos are some of the more successful ones of the day.

Note: there are a couple of photos that use the mouse-over effect that won't work in your feed reader. Just click through to the post if you wish to see the before/after shots.



I decided the only way to get some good action shots was to join the kids in the jumpy-house. I survived despite many near misses.





I love this photo! Note: No children with pengiun stuffed animals were harmed during the taking of this photo.






Sometimes cropping helps you focus your intentions with the photo. By mousing over this photo you can see how I chose to remove everything that I felt was only serving to add eye-noise and distractions to the main focal point of the image -- which in this case is my nephew Drew.





I love the look of anticipation in my nephew's face as he nears the top of the obstacle.




Here's another cropped image -- mouse-over it and see what I chose to take out. Again, I felt like the focus of the image should be the boys in the chair/throne.



















Earlier in the day about 10 minutes into the festivities, Scott collided with another kid and got a fat lip. I think every six year old reserves the right to lick the frosted candle with their fat lip.













My sister's creation: A cupcake inside of an ice cream cone. I don't have to tell you that these went over really well with the gang.



Scott invited the other kids to help him open gifts, who were only too willing to join the fun.

For more, visit the full gallery: http://picasaweb.google.com/antman/ScottS6thBirthday