Saturday was the Literary Extravaganza hosted at Beale Street Brews. This was the second sortie in a fundraising effort to help students at the dojo (White Wind Tiger) pay for their fees for an upcoming tournament. Once students get past a certain rank, tournament attendance is compulsory, but the fees can run as high as $90 per entrant.
So one dojo student, in his teens, decided it might be a good idea to do some fundraisers. The first one, a car wash, went off two weeks ago and was the most successful car wash on record for the dojo. The second event, the Literary Extravaganza, was today; and it featured books for sale by the pound, as well as open poetry and fiction readings. For a town as small, remote and rural as this one is, it was amazingly well received. Between the two events, about $800 was raised. That’s not bad by most standards.
It was hot as hell today (105 in the shade), we had something on the order of half a ton of books to sell at $1.50/lb., but still the key player and organizer of the event took a little time to play with a cute little kid.
It was one of those moments that you either get or you don’t. I have a new D40 — essentially the same as the D50 I use at work, except it’s smaller and doesn’t autobracket exposure — and its combination of instant-on, autofocus, trustworthy exposure and white balance and a flexible zoom let me capture this. I had about two seconds to see the shot, turn on the camera, compose and hit the shutter — and of the pair of exposures I got, this was the better one.
Oh, the fact that the subjects were at ease helped.
This JPEG is virtually identical to the raw NEF I took off the chip; I only upped the EV by .6. I didn’t do anything else to the framing, color balance or what have you. I didn’t even need a fill flash; the shop windows reflected enough light to cover me.
Sometimes, you just get really lucky.
Now how can you not fall in love with these kids?
