Devry held their 2011 convocation ceremony Saturday in Calgary.  I was excited to be the official photographer again this year. The occasion also marked their 30th Anniversary. City of Calgary Ward 10 Alderman and Devry graduate, Andre Chabot,  was invited to be the feature speaker.

The portrait session before and after the ceremony certainly kept me busy.  I enlisted the help of my daughter to help set up and to organize the graduates for their portraits.  She did a great job.  She even did a great pose for me on my new backdrop to help me lock in my exposure settings.

I like to get shots that show the character of the event.  In this case, it would be people in uniform.  And I found  some particularly interesting people in uniform.

And of course, I had to capture one that was just there because she had to be and wasn’t much interested in the long-winded rambling that accompanies pomp and ceremony.  “When is it over dad?”

That’s one advantage of being on the ground.  Of course, I would also love to have a really long lens and a roof like these guys did. I’d be curious to see what they got.  The rule of thumb for long lenses is that your shutter speed needs to be at least as fast as the length you’re shooting at.  So, for a 200 mm lens, you need to shoot at 1/200 second or faster to keep from getting a blurred shot.  If the lighting isn’t good enough, you can’t do it without a tripod.

After the ceremony, the museums were open to the public to view.   The lighting in most parts are poor, so it’s hard to get much for shots without a flash.  The problem with using flash is that most exhibits are behind glass, so you often get a lot of glare.

There’s a new exhibit featuring naval items.  One of my favourites is the ship models.  They’re also behind glass. As you can see, they’re too delicate to risk someone touching it.  They’re also nicely lit with huge windows allowing tons of natural light.  The trick then is to try to position yourself to limit or eliminate reflection.  You can also use a polarizing filter.  That cuts a lot of light though, so you’ll need a tripod.