Richard Blanco - Presidential Poet

ajramirez

Hall of Famer
Location
Caguas, Puerto Rico
Name
Antonio
From Wikipedia:

"Richard Blanco (born February 15, 1968) is an American poet, public speaker, author and civil engineer. He is the fifth poet to read at a United States presidential inauguration, having read for Barack Obama's second inauguration. He is the first immigrant, the first Latino, the first openly gay person and the youngest person to be the U.S. inaugural poet."

Mr. Blanco participated last night in a poetry reading and discussion with Puerto Rican poet Mayra Santos Febres at the Puerto Rico Museum of Contemporary Art.

The beautiful young lady in the second photo is the Executive Director of the Museum, Marianne Ramírez, who is also my sister.

The photographs on the banners in the last photo are by Puerto Rican artist Carlos Betancourt, whose exhibit opened at the Museum last Wednesday.

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Richard Blanco
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Marianne Ramírez
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Richard Blanco y Mayra Santos Febres
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Richard Blanco
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Mayra Santos Febres
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Mayra Santos Febres
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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Mayra Santos Febres y Richard Blanco
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

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MAC
by Antonio Ramirez, on Flickr

All on the Nikon Df and 200mm 4.0 AIS Nikkor (1 - 7) and 25mm 2.0 Distagon ZF.2 (8). ISO 12,800 on the first 7 and 3200 on the last.

Cheers,

Antonio
 
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Great work Antonio. So cool to be able to shoot in relatively low light at f4 and know the camera will handle the ISO you need to get the shot. Although I'd imagine it was more of a challenge with a 200mm manual focus lens without VR - I'm usually using the AF/VR 24-120 when I'm shooting people in low light at f4... Well done - VERY!

-Ray
 
Great work Antonio. So cool to be able to shoot in relatively low light at f4 and know the camera will handle the ISO you need to get the shot. Although I'd imagine it was more of a challenge with a 200mm manual focus lens without VR - I'm usually using the AF/VR 24-120 when I'm shooting people in low light at f4... Well done - VERY!

-Ray

Ray, I swear this camera can see in the dark! This wasn't relatively low light; this was outright low light. They took some noise reduction in ACR, but it's amazing how well the colors hold.

Using the 200mm was not difficult, because the subjects were not moving very much at all. Sweet lens, particularly for its price. Highly recommended.

Cheers,

Antonio
 
Ray, I swear this camera can see in the dark! This wasn't relatively low light; this was outright low light. They took some noise reduction in ACR, but it's amazing how well the colors hold.

Using the 200mm was not difficult, because the subjects were not moving very much at all. Sweet lens, particularly for its price. Highly recommended.
Yeah, I think it's less about noise (which the higher res sensors also handle quite well once you take downsampling into account) than the color performance and DR at those high ISOs - pretty amazing being able to shoot at 12,800 with impunity.

I have the 180 f2.8 AF, so probably no need for a 200mm prime. I thought about maybe the 80-200 f2.8, but then I saw a photo of it on the DF and, damn, that thing is HUGE. Way bigger than I really want to point at anyone at a distance that 200mm would cover well, let alone more intimate settings than that...

-Ray
 
It is amazing how much color you got at those ISO levels.
You've captured the emotions on their faces very well. A beautiful series.
 
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