New Year's Eve at the Buzzard Drop

 

Happy New Year to you all. I ended 2014 and began 2015 doing what I love best accompanied by the person I love most.  I was photographing the Buzzard Drop in Perry, Georgia. New York drops the apple, Atlanta its peach, and Perry drops a buzzard.  What can I say....

It was held in downtown Perry, and there was not a lot of light.  Eric Borden caught my eye with his lighted mohawk and glasses. I had photographed him earlier with flash, but saw him later and shot this using available light. This was exposed for the lights, 1600 ISO, 1/125th second at f2.8. It was shot as a raw file, so I had a lot more latitude that with a jpg image. 

 

For the second image, I bumped the ISO up to 3200, and dropped my shutter speed down to 1/40th second. Both were shot with my 70-200 f2.8 zoom.  The first was zoomed to 125mm, the second one at 105mm. The slower shutter speed picks up what little ambient light is around, giving detail to the faces.

The last image is the first one I shot using flash. I shot it at 1/13th second, my aperture was f5.6. The idea is to balance your exposure to use both the available light and the flash so they are even.

Have a great 2015, and watch out for dropping buzzards, and buzzard droppings!