The Poetry Reading (29 March 2014)

By Michael Dickel on Wednesday, 2 April, 2014 • ( Leave a comment )

The Poetry Reading

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Saturday evening, 29 March 2014, as I scurried about the house preparing to head out to participate in Jerusalism’s Wordplay reading, one of the organizers called me. Lonnie Monka told me that the photographer scheduled to cover the event had to cancel at the last minute. Lonnie wondered if I might take my camera with me and shoot the event (as well as read). Sure. Why not…?

Jerusalism commandeered the “half” of Heder v’Hetzi (Room and a Half) Bar in (West) Jerusalem’s center for the reading. A dark bar with a smaller room walled off in glass where events such as this can happen, Heder v’Hetzi proved a great venue. We filled the “half” room to capacity, and several of us hung out at the bar afterwards talking writing, art, music, and life in Israel.

Some of the photos I took came out well (and will soon be posted on Facebook here or here). However, as usual in a low-light, live situation, many of the photos also did not turn out great. Focus was off, movement blurs distorted the images because of low shutter speeds, all of that. So what to do with these images?

Play in Adobe® PhotoShop, of course.

And here, for your viewing pleasure, I offer this series of digital art from photos. (The cover photo of the slide show is “Ambience,” a straight-up photo, and “Transforming-1” is an in-camera trick. The other photos are digital art from photos.)

Right-click (alt-click for us Mac users) images in slide show to open them in another window.

Scroll down to see the images in a larger format, posted individually.