I've finished the shots from my two late July expeditions to see Beth Patterson (who has her own gallery here). This is probably some of the most challenging shooting I've done recently, and it showed in the final shot count: between the two trips, I shot 85 pictures, and kept only 29 (and I was rather generous in what I kept). I've since bought a diffuser (a Sto-Fen Omni-Bounce for the curious), and I need to go back and try again and try that, but dealing with the lighting was brutal — multiple light sources, each at a different temperature, an overall low-light environment, and little room to maneuver. It's also difficult to freeze action, even at 1/250 sec., and even more difficult to get the timing exactly right on rapidly changing facial expressions, and since this is an Irish pub, not a rock venue, I felt bad about using the flash a lot (though Beth was quite nice about it, telling me, "You can flash me any time you want!").

Two of the best shots, for those that don't want to go through the galleries: