“O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name.
Or if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.”
I had the week off last week and was fortunate to be able to attend Courtney’s 6th grade class’ rendition of Romeo and Juliet on Tuesday. It was a a great time! The kids did a fabulous job with their lines and they had a lot of fun with their acting. The audience was mostly other elementary school children – they loved the death scenes and thought the kissing was gross. Their reactions were almost as fun as everything going on on stage. The photos in this posting give you the gist of the story: fighting, parties, love, and in the end the big names in the play all die. 
Of course I reveled at the chance to try photographing the event. Wow, not easy! Once again the lighting was the biggest challenge: a combination of constantly changing dim stage lighting, colored spotlights, and lots of on-stage action made for pretty tough photography conditions, at least for my skill level. I was constantly checking my camera settings and the results on my LCD screen. I tried setting my Nikon at ISO 1600 using aperture priority mode most of the time. A lot of the photos turned out too gray for my taste (rather than black) in the dark areas of the photos so I think I may have needed to set the exposure compensation down a stop or two. Or maybe I could have lived with a lower ISO setting?
I refrained from using my flash to minimize the distraction it would be to the performers. Not all the parents followed the same this no-flash philosophy, which I found a bit annoying. I think I was extra sensitive because at Courtney’s dance recitals the dance instructor, Liz, insists on a “no flash photography” rule during performances.
White balance was a challenge due to the colored spotlight they were using. I tried a few different settings but in the end left the camera on auto white balance because I felt like I was making things worse by using my own settings.
I’m doing a trial of Adobe Lightroom 2 and I find it very intriguing. I used it to post-process these photos. Although I don’t know much about the software yet, it will eliminate most of my need for Photoshop Elements. Using Lightroom will require that I learn new workflows, but that’s an area I would like to improve on anyway. One thing I like is that there are a ton of resources on the Web about using the software. I’d really like to buy a license. The price is a bit steep for my budget though so we’ll see.