Some people shoot professional sporting events, some shoot fans, some shoot local little league teams. Me, I shoot pinball. Well I don’t do it on a regular basis simply because there’s not that much going 
on with pinball these days, or as luck would have it there’s a convention in Seattle when I’m out of town. Such was the case on the weekend of June 13th, 2009 when the NW Pinball Show had a full weekend of pinball and arcade action at Seattle Center – I was in the Mt. Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest shooting Heather Lake (snow in June!). Expect those pictures soon.
Until then, let’s revisit one of my favorite photo shoots: the Pinball Hall of Fame (aka the Pinball Museum) in Las Vegas, NV. I try to visit at least once every time I’m in Vegas and last year I set up late one evening for a shoot around the pins. The result turned out really well. This was one of my favorite technical shoots because I was using nothing but natural light from the pins: no overhead lighting, definitely no flash, and a lot of movement. To make matters more interesting I was shooting with a relatively slow lens for that environment, f3.5-5.6 (brought the zoom because I didn’t know how close I could get to the playfields). There was a lot of tweaking the ISO and shutter speed to capture a nice mix of lights, playfield action, and play speed. I’m extremely happy with the result and it’s one of my favorite galleries. Check it out on the Sealed Glass Photo site and let me know what you think.
I’ve been tempted to go back and re-shoot with my 50mm f1.4 but I don’t know that I could capture the dark, slightly grainy feeling with a faster lens. Sometimes working with what we have produces a result that just nails the mood.
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