Every year, on September 21st OSC celebrates their school’s anniversary known as “Founders Day”. During this event, there are speeches made, performances by the primary school grades as well as ceremonial traditions for example, Kandyan dancing, lighting of the oil lamp and national anthem of the host nation, Sri Lanka.
For this event, I was given the opportunity to collect footage coverage on the Founders day for my Service, Gecko Network. This was a great way to work towards my goal of improving my photography skills. My service leader (Anuda) and I started to set up all the gear early in the morning before the assembly. I got to learn how to properly assemble a Cannon Camera and lock it in place within a Ronin camera stabiliser. I was fully able to make sure the camera was configured on the ronin so that it was balanced and calibrated the camera to stabilize in the event of unwanted shaking or movement.
Anuda, showing me how to smoothly film with the Ronin Camera stabilizer.
After the setting up was complete we set off to gather footage of the assembly. Anuda was very helpful in giving me tips and tricks on using cameras and the ronin stabilizer. For example, Anuda told me to look out in an image to follow the rule of thirds which, means that you should break a photo into thirds and include the object of focus in the center panel whilst including foregrounds and backgrounds in the other panels. Another tip was to not move too quickly, otherwise one risks blurring the final pictures and videos.
In total we spent around 1 hour going around, gathering footage of the event. I had achieved my first step to achieving my service CAS goal for gecko network, “to develop a new interest in photography which will help me furthermore gather footage during school events.” The event was a balance of gathering both video and photos, all of which, are available on the Gecko Network site: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1S2B65539IwtUl88xXPeccQuUjKZxCiuv