Recital Behavior

"Sisters" Cedar Park, 2016
Photo info: FUJIFILM X100T, 23mm, f/3.6, 1/60 sec, ISO3200
“Sisters” Cedar Park, 2016

こんばんは!How’s it going?

Today Bay had a piano recital in North Austin. 🎹 His piano teacher has a large number of students, so the recital is split into two parts, and each part starts with the beginning piano students and ends with the advanced students. I’m proud to say that Bay performed in the last slot of the first recital! 😄

He’s really come a long way since he first began several years ago… time flies… I remember when he was one of the first students in the recital line up.

Since we’ve been going to recitals for a while now, we’ve become old hats at it. I always set up my tripod and make a video of Bay’s performance, and I notice a lot things that newbie photographers do. I guess since I’m a photo enthusiast, and take photos sometimes for work, so I operate in a more discreet way, but I find some of the beginner “mistakes” interesting. For instance not setting the camera’s audio cues to silent. I hear the auto-focus beep go off multiple times before a shot is taken. The beep is annoying since you can hear it on the audio recordings.

Another thing is that people have their tripods set up in the middle aisle, which is fine, but you shouldn’t leave it there for the whole recital. Just put it there for when your child performs, then move it out of the way afterwards.

Also, don’t walk down the middle aisle during the performances. Use the side aisles, or at least wait until the song is over. And it’s nice if you keep your kids from constantly running down the aisle. And also, don’t give little kids in the audience bags of chips! Those things are loud.

Today there was a teenager with her dSLR sitting in the audience, taking photos of her young sisters or cousins who were also sitting in the audience. That is ok for one or two snaps, but not 20 or 30 photos, especially using flash + AF-assist flash, and pointing towards other audience members since your sibling subjects are sitting far across the room. Rude! People are trying to watch/listen to their kids perform, and then someone is firing her flash towards you and making a loud dSLR click noise. Plus, the flash is distracting to the performers.

Anyways, these are just minor annoyances… it’s not like we’re at Carnegie Hall! But I do find it interesting that some people don’t think it is rude, or is it that I am ultra-sensitive to these things? Probably a bit of both. 😋

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Today’s photo is of our cats, resting comfortably together on the sofa. There’s a word in Japanese that describes them perfectly: “Nakayoshi”, which means friendship, or closeness, often when snuggling.

I hope you had a nice Saturday!

おやすみなさい!

– B Barron Fujimoto

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