To solve the problem of the artists during their presentation, you can do a couple of things.
1) Just do like wedding folks do, march up front, blast a couple, and retreat.
2) Get a monopod and a longer lens and shoot from the back. My experience with presentations is that the presenter is frequently but not always pretty well lit. With Image Stabilization flash may not be necessary.
3) Get an assistant ( or two ) to hold the extra flashes. They're not tripods or light stands and can get out of the way if necessary.
As to the suggestion of shooting in RAW mode. This can help a great deal with light fall-off. You'll have to make two conversions from the original raw image, one to balance the lighting for the foreground and one for the background. You ought to be able to swing a tow stop difference between them. The overlay and blend them together to get a better balance image.
Finally, there are fresnel lens attachments that can be added to your flash unit that will extend the reach considerably. All they do is narrow the focus of the light coming from the flash. The TTL, etc. are not interfered with in any way. So, if you are at the back of a big room, have the appropriate length lens, and one of these, you can get close-up fully illuminated easily.
Cheers and good luck,
James
At 06:43 AM 9/9/2006 -0700, you wrote:
Thank you for your suggestions, James. The building and situations under which I am photographing cause some of the problems. There is no real ceiling to bounce the flash off of - The ceiling is about 15 feet high and is just a dark hole. It looks great in the gallery and the space is put to use for "high" flying exhibits (an actual model of the Wright Bros. plane was hung in this area for a recent exhibit of work put up by The American Society of Aviation Artist's - amazing art work, by the way). I've tried bouncing off of walls but that doesn't always work.
Setting lights up around the gallery is not an option due to light stands, etc. getting in the way, people tripping, lights getting knocked over and crashing in to a piece of art work, etc.
Part of my job is to photograph receptions which means photographing groups of people and following the artist/guests around to all areas of the gallery/museum. I like to stay in the background, but I may just have to start asking people to "stand there, please" so I can control the lighting.
The most difficult part is photographing the artist while they give presentations to the guests. The audience is seated in a rather large area and the artist is 10 or so feet in front of the audience.
Back to the drawing board {:->
Marilyn
