Another fabulous evening at the NZ Aria finals last night. A very high standard of performance and the inclusion of the Chapman Tripp Opera Chorus was a nice addition to the programme. As usual the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra under Tom Woods was a delight to hear. Congratulations to all finalists and especially the winner, James Ioelu with his standout performance of the Catalogue Aria from Mozart’s Don Giovanni. See the gallery for all the photos.

Photographing stage shows is often a challenge due to the relative lack of light and frequently variable high contrast lighting with the performers in brighter spotlit conditions than the rest of the stage. The Aria is relatively easy as the lighting is constant with a slight highlight (approx 1 stop of light) on the performers. Using the Nikon D3s at 1600 ISO, manual exposure is essential and 1/200-1/400 at f2.8 gave a good exposure with the Nikon 70-200 2.8 gimble mounted using a Wimberly Sidekick with a RRS BH55 ballhead on a Manfrotto 055MF3 carbon tripod. Lighting was about 1 stop brighter than last year when I needed ISO 3200 to get decent exposures. LightRoom5 gives good control over the shadows and highlights to keep detail in the white shirts and dark suits if the exposure if correct. After setting up PhotoShop actions to resize, add my favourite OnOne filter (Warm Portrait – unfortunately no longer available in their latest Suite) and sharpen with Pixel Genius’ Photokit Sharpener 2 and save 2 size versions, I was able to get through the files quite quickly. Batch resizing in Bridge has them ready for my web gallery with is easily done using the Photocrati theme for WordPress.