exposing these photos so that they look like they are shot in a cave because it seems arty or whether there just isn't enough info in the darker areas to produce a shot that looks more like how the scene was in reality. Or at least you'd need too long a shutter speed to achieve this.
In short, yes. I've not done much comp photography, but I'd imagine its pretty hard to pack enough flashpower to light the whole room.
Anyway, not trying to be critical here, just wondering about the reasoning that this seems to be the norm for these photos.
Were you at the comp? If you weren't, there were lots of bodies even on the hard side of the railings. By using ambient or lighting everything it was quite hard to get rid of the clutter such as judges/brushers/fluffers and the rest. To start with I was stood up by the windows so I didn't have a lot of choice in composition to eliminate, anything. Adam put this more succinctly.
I think the OCF gives a much better effect than flash from the camera, it's all the really dark shadows that put me off. Even more so than the black backgrounds.
I was actually sat next to your missus, so I know where you were shooting from and where the flash was
Soz Paul It's difficult to keep out of everyone's way. i had a Messenger cropping up in my pics.
You can get rid of the hard shadows by using a softer more diffuse light source but that hardness is dictated by size