After a week of being sick I can get back to catching up on both Bellydance Gala and Sweeney Todd images. Getting the color out to them isn’t all that trying – and only the Bellydance girls really those. My b&w is another story altogether – if it goes smoothly, maybe fifteen minutes each. Enough have major corrections taking them to a half hour (and beyond) to bring the average to closer to twenty minutes at best – plus maybe another five or ten to get a cup of tea or beat my head against a cinderblock to recover. Both of these shows were at the Star Center – horrible lighting and large obsturcting speaker boxes lining the front of the stage. And the Hafla utilized a screen backdrop that showed horrendous visual flaws.

Still only about half way through with Sweeney images, and just getting started on shots of 29 performances in the Gala (ouch), hoping to get an average of two finals for each – 60 images times 20 minutes for just the Gala, add in almost as many Sweeney images to go and the work-load becomes evident.

Kalayla is a regular at these who always puts on a great show, as well as obviously enjoying herself immensely. One of the high points of every Gala she performs in. I’m getting quite a b&w collection of her (again, the color is out there, actually pretty nicey worked up, but not my purpose of focus).

Blue Lapis & Silk is one of the many groups performing. Here are a couple from their performance…

Star Center work is hampered greatly by the presence of an array of large speaker boxes lining the front of the stage. In b&w expecially, they can eliminate use of an otherwise fine image if they can’t be removed due to obstructing a whole leg, etc.