Community service work is one element of my life that has grown larger as I've matured. I choose where to volunteer, and am more careful in where I give my energy. There are so many worthy groups, and I have so little time that is descretionary, I choose small tasks, small projects to avoid over commitment.

Some of the work that I've taken on aims to enable community video broadcasting, to give voices to folks who would otherwise be invisible. I've been working to bring this capacity to Marin, sometimes by individual action such as volunteering as a camera operator on a crew making a public access show about a local human treasure or a local issue. Other times it is supporting the Community Media Center of Marin, serving as a volunteer board chair, working with Marin Telecommunications Agency on Public Access issues, negotiating contracts and organizing the non-profit that now runs the local stations. Sometimes it's a solo project, something that I can do on my own initiative. Sometimes those projects become the seed for a project in another cycle.

Recently I took some photographs of a local event, the 2009 Planetary Dance at Santos Meadow, and posted a few on the web. I shared the images with some of the folks who participated, and a link went out to a group of folks. Out of the blue, I received an email from a person who I knew back in 1975 and hadn't seen for all these years. Nice complement on the photos, and a reminder of just how connected we are in this community. Our links are many times unknown until some serendipity releases a glimmer of light.

There were othe comments, and that was nice, a project "delivered", a promise kept.

When I made these photos, I knew that the group has some amazing people in it, some artists, some dancers, poets, drummers and musicians, singers and actors, writers, architects and crafts people, dabblers and masters, cooks and parents, children and grandparents, and many who are much more. It was a privilege to be able to take photos amongst folks who are comfortable with media, who embrace it and utilize it themselves, people who are comfortable enough with themselves ( for the most part) that a camera isn't a distraction from their focus on the performer or the audience. The performances were called "offerinigs" and indeed that was the spirit of the day.

Interesting to edit the photos, as I thought that I was taking a lot of pictures, but when I'm critical, there aren't that many good pictures. While shooting I'm working to get the best image every time, but I also know that with movement I must be both with the rhythm and anticipatory, and repeat often to ensure that I have made an image of the action at it's most expressive instant.

Still photos are by nature in tension with the fluidity that is the essence of dance, yet sometimes the still image captures something of the event that is evocative and true to the performance. This is what I seek when I make event photos.

The Nikon D300 is fast enough that I am regaining my sense of precisely how long it is between the time that I press the shutter release and the time that the image is recorded. This physical knowledge in my mindBody enables me to take thoughtful photographs rather than use the "hose" method of action photography. Even so, I need to make quite a few images to yield a few really outstanding images that convey what I envisioned, and what was going on with the subject.

Just a few years ago, digital camera's couldn't capture a good image fast enough and with a very predictable interval so for years I couldn't use the techniques that I'd developed shooting news and sports with my Nikon film cameras. You have to shoot thousands of images, working to make a good picture each time, before you have the proficiency to start to attend to another level of the art. It's a skill thing, enabled by hardware. It's a skill built by reviewing thoughtfully each image that I made, reflecting on what works, what I missed each time that I made an image.

It was fun this weekend to know that the ability to capture an image when I think/see that its the right moment is returning. I used two lenses, a 12-24mm zoom and the 18-200 VR lens. Some of my favorite images were made with the wide angle lens. I'm glad that I had both, there were even a few times when I wished that I had brought the 80-400mm VR lens along. The long lens is heavy, maybe 4 lbs, and I left it in the car. My mobility was very important.

Once back home, I transferred the images to a pc and used Adobe Lightroom to edit the days production. I selected a collection of about 112 images from over 425 that I made on Saturday. Each image was cropped, had it's histogram adjusted to ensure proper whites and blacks, then I adjusted the gamma curve on many of the images, adjusted saturation, applied sharpening. Next I dodged and burned some parts of images to deal with the excessive contrast outdoors.

Then I exported the non-destructively edited images to a web gallery using a Flash template. Next I wrote some minimal copy, and posted the 200mb+ ensemble to a web site. Sent out some links to folks after testing the web gallery to ensure that it "could work". This editing process took about 4 hours, at least.

It was important to complete the edit asap, to post the images before the glow of the event faded. This I did, and the process was very enjoyable.

It would have been even better to have collaborated with someone who could record and edit audio, as sound was an important element at the event. The stills are really abstract without sound, but they have a descriptive artistic power of their own.