Yesterday the week of May Balls was kicked off in Cambridge. One of the first colleges to have their May Ball (in June!) is Homerton College. The college has a lot of theatre people, so there were many familiar faces there. The theme of the May Ball was Olympus, with characters from the Greek mythology roaming the college grounds.
Here is a small selection of photos from the evening. There will be more on Facebook later. Also I am considering generating a pdf with previews of the unedited photos if people are interested.
I arrived quite early, and did some photos of a group of Homerton students that were heading off to Robinson College for the May Ball there. Here are Helen Lam, Robbie Taylor Hunt, Rebecca Thomas, Jonathan Huse and Marina Anastasi.There were quite a few more people than I had expected on the lawn. Lydia Redman, Sean Gill, Marina Anastasi, Polina Gordovich, Jelani Okoruwa, Annie Caffyn, Georgina Hammerton, Robbie Taylor Hunt, Helen Lam, Vincent Hall, Alice Durrans, James King, Leonardo Buizza, Freddie Cooke, Alex Greenwood, Emily Elliott, Sophia Kosasih, Toby Molyneux, Sarah Hardy, Peter Dolan, Rowenna McGill, Jonathan Huse, Ina Drouven, Oscar Mellors, Alice Gough, Caitlin Whitby and Matt Penellum.Charlee Buzzard, Ben Glassberg, Rhianna Frost, Megan Henson and Isabelle Barber.I snuck into the dinner hall and snapped some photos of the guests there.Jonny Smith, Helena Blair and Thomas BrouwerOutside the queue is growing.Inside the last few preparations are frantically done, while others just casually wait for the guests to arrive. Here Emma Riggs.I wanted to include a bit of scenery in the photo, here shooting from a low angle to try and get the tower in the background in the view. Almost managed.The weather gods sprinkled the ball with a bit of rain. Luckily this is England, and people are prepared.Kilts and photobombs.I found a spot just past the entrance which had quite good light, so parked myself there and took photos of a lot of guests as they entered. I just show a small selection here.Arriving in style.Ed Broadhead and Rebekah Clayton.Ice cream in the rain!Caroline HopperConnie Muttock and crew..Jade CuttleIsabelle Barber.Hazel Shearing performing on the stage.Chris Howarth, Thomas Brouwer and Helena Blair.Kaiti SoultanaKaiti Soultana.Hao Feng taking over the dance floor.Vicki Hodgson, Ben Hetherington, Bethan Davidson, Michelle Lim, Rosie Mearns and Amy Botwright..Emily Layton and Emma Hollows..Fabian Bräuer, Christy Chadwick, Ossian Orm Rundquist, Flo Best, Jack Bennett and Alex Wills...Zoé Barnes and Hao FengJohannes Hjorth and Helena Blair. One of the few photos of me from the evening..Building pyramids until Heath and Safety regulations forced us to stop..The instructions payed off… well, almost.Round and round! She had to do it twice, since my first photos got overexposed. Whoops!Hao Feng and Alys Williams reunited..Kate Stevenson and Will BishopIdel Hanley, Riss Obolensky and Kate Stevenson.Bethan Davidson. In these photos I am using a flash, and then moving the camera to get the background blurred. My shutter is about 1/10 seconds for this.The headliner....One last photo for the evening before I headed home.
Many thanks to the Homerton May Ball, and to the guests. Also a special thanks to Hao Feng for helping me out by holding the external flash, and flashing people.
Out of interest, what flash / lighting setup were you using? Did you have off-camera flash? In particular, the photo of Chris Howarth, Thomas Brouwer and Helena Blair looks like it has a light source slightly left of camera….
Hej Alastair! For the flash photos I am using an external hand-held flash with a snoot which restricts the light into a relatively narrow cone. Most of the Nikon cameras let you use the internal flash in commander mode to control an external flash. More info here: https://photo.johanneshjorth.se/off-camera-flash/
Alastair
June 14, 2015
Thanks, Johannes! I hadn’t realised you’d posted on off-camera flash before. I guess the snoot would explain how you got that fairly distinctive look in the shots above! I like it! 🙂
I’ve got an SB-800, but my low-end camera body doesn’t have a commander mode… Have managed to use the built-in flash as an optical trigger for the SB-800 before now though, and have since bought a pocket-wizard-type remote flash trigger which generally does the job…..
Out of interest, what flash / lighting setup were you using? Did you have off-camera flash? In particular, the photo of Chris Howarth, Thomas Brouwer and Helena Blair looks like it has a light source slightly left of camera….
Hej Alastair! For the flash photos I am using an external hand-held flash with a snoot which restricts the light into a relatively narrow cone. Most of the Nikon cameras let you use the internal flash in commander mode to control an external flash. More info here: https://photo.johanneshjorth.se/off-camera-flash/
Thanks, Johannes! I hadn’t realised you’d posted on off-camera flash before. I guess the snoot would explain how you got that fairly distinctive look in the shots above! I like it! 🙂
I’ve got an SB-800, but my low-end camera body doesn’t have a commander mode… Have managed to use the built-in flash as an optical trigger for the SB-800 before now though, and have since bought a pocket-wizard-type remote flash trigger which generally does the job…..