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James Holden uhm, rocking?, the crowd…

Photo was taken at the 10 year Anniversary party of Awakenings: Awakefest in the Recreation Area Halfweg. June 26th 2010

When I entered the tent where James Holden was performing I immediately saw this couple at the front of the crowd.
I always have one camerabody with a telelens ready to shoot at these large events (which means: set at Av). Sometimes you have to act so quickly there is no time to adjust your settings properly on manual. So this one was taken with a maximum open aperture (f5) with my 100-400mm Canon EF f4.5-5.6. While shooting I adjusted to -2/3 of a stop in order to get a darker image and a slightly higher shuttertime (at 800ISO). I was hoping to get the couple frozen (they weren’t moving, so that was easy) with a blurred crowd behind them due to movement.
Fortunately the lens has stabilization so I can take really low shuttertimes (1/13th in this image) with my pretty steady hand. Took a whole bunch of shots and this one came out nicest (some are sharper but I like the people moving next to them, like the guy on the left, in this shot).
Converted it to B&W in Photoshop to get some more focus on the couple: reds turned up in the B&W control panel and then used levels to deepen the blacks and finally slightly upped their mouthes with a mask and then adjusting with the curve tool as there was a bit of shadow in that part of the shot.

Client: Bacardi-Martini NV
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