In the weeks before the COVID-19 lockdown we went to Nidd Hall, in North Yorkshire, to see The Flyrights perform. This image was from the second half of their performance.

Léon

Judge’s comments
… Who is Leon? I would love to know who Leon is. You are teasing us too much. I just wish I knew a little bit more about this .

… Is he a musician? He has some sort of a fancy top on, author please put me out of my misery and tell me at the end who Leon is

… However, it is a great candid view, , simple but effective, he is looking into the space in front of him here, has glints in his eye , but look at all this sheen across, , a dancer or something? at a concert?

… it is obviously quite contrasty , obviously quite bright in some areas but I can see lots of rim lighting so that is doing well itself

… exposure – I can see it was a very challenging evening but I think that the high key sweat is excellent, sharpness obviously very very sharp

… I’ll hold that one back

At the end of the judging of Division 1, the judge reviewed the held back images and made these comments.

Extract from the judge’s summary
… for bragging rights , Leon also gets 10 and for me is the best picture in Division 1

… it is very appealing and I could see this on some sort of coffee table book of rock and roll stars

… the look and the expression he has, everything about it screams professional photography

I really enjoyed this overall

The score

There were 20 images in this projected digital round in Division 1 and ‘Léon‘ scored 10.

The original image

My camera was set up to record both RAW and mono JPG images on separate cards. I was shooting from the dance floor both dancing, singing and avoiding the others surrounding me.

The image was shot at ISO3200, 105 mm f/4.5 and 1/200 sec. I had originally planned to use my nifty 50 f/1.8 STM but I had to revert to my 24-105 f/1.4L lens as I was often shooting well back from the low stage.

I used the out of camera mono image, cropped it and then adjusted slightly the contrast, clarity and dehaze in Lightroom; and finally cloned out the bright spots using PhotoShop.

These are some of my other images from the Flyrights at Nidd Hall in February.