Michael Yarabinee

Over the course of the past two weeks, and many weeks of preparation leading up to that, I have had the honor of being Technical Director once again for Interboro High School's Theatre program. It is always an awesome experience, I get to work with an amazing cast, dedicated crew and three awesome directors! I have had many technical challenges throughout the run of this show, however the most significant of these challenges was re-programing the entire show's lighting in 16 hours. I had everything set, powered down the computer, the next day I came in, powered up everything, and got an error message stating my show file was corrupt. This was literally the most terrifying moment of my lighting career so far. I spent the past week programming over 500 lighting cues, and lost all of it 2 days before opening night. After determining there was no rescuing the corrupt file, I started from scratch. Total, I sat in front of a computer for 16 hours Re-programming the entire show, cue by cue. In the end however, you would never be able to tell that we lost everything. I had the entire show memorized, so everything was exactly the same as before the file became corrupt. Needless to say, now I keep 4 backups on 4 different USB Drives. Overall, a very rewarding experience, and I look forward to next years shows! Photos I took from this show are viewable on my Photography Website Here.

Recently, I had the opportunity to work with Norwood Elementary School on a project to produce a Lip Dub Video. My role in this project was to make sure everything from a technical standpoint ran smoothly. I filmed with a Canon 70D DSLR Camera, Canon EF 28-135 Lens and my new Glidecam HD2000. This project was a challenge due to the fact that we would be walking through the halls of a school, and our goal was to have as little camera shake as possible. Now I got my Glidecam HD200 two days prior to the filming of this project. Needless to say, I was running Everywhere I possibly could with the Glidecam, trying to both make sure it was balanced perfectly, and trying to get the hang of controlling it, as this is the first camera stabilizer I have ever used. In the end everything turned out Excellent! The project turnaround was approximately 36 hours which to date is the fastest project I have ever completed. I will also be posting a behind the scenes video soon, so you can see everything that went into this video!

Walt Disney World photography ventures

As I previously mentioned in my last blog post, I was invited to travel with a high school’s marching band to Walt Disney World as their photographer for the trip. I was eager to take the opportunity, but I faced many photography challenges, one in particular was that the parade they were performing in was at 7:00PM, Disney’s Electrical Light Parade, which meant little to no light for shooting. Thanks to my new Canon 50mm EF f/1.8 Lens, I was able to overcome this obstacle and take great low light photos, with little to no noise! This worked wonders for shooting this parade at night. (I posted some photos from this parade above.)

Throughout the rest of the trip, I relied primarily on my Canon EF 28-135 f/ 3.5-5.6 lens, which is not one to disappoint. Here you can find some photos shot with this lens, paired with my Canon T2i.  As I am still sorting through photos from this trip, along with all of the other Events I have shot recently, Keep an eye on my website for newly published photos: http://michaelyarabineephotography.me

As always, to keep up with me on my everyday travels, follow me on Twitter & Instagram @myarabinee1995 / @michaelyarabinee respectively.

Learning along the way

Lately, I've been busy with a lot of newfound photography work for a local high school.

Over the past month I have had the privilege to shoot a handful of dances, theatrical performances, and even had the opportunity to travel to Walt Disney World in Orlando, FL for one week, to photograph a marching band perform down Main Street USA. I will go into this more in a future post, but What an amazing experience!

I have also recently went out on a whim and made the transition to shooting in RAW + JPEG on my Canon 70D & T2i. I have heard many great things about shooting RAW, and I was surprised at how great it actually is. Of all the perks I have found, the ability to Manipulate photos without major quality degradation is definitely at the top of the list. Above are some recent photos from my photography trip to Walt Disney World.

All of the experiences photography has opened up to me so far has been amazing, and I can't wait to see what the future holds. As always, If you want to keep up with my recent work, check out my website http://michaelyarabineephotography.me. Also, If you want to keep up with me in my travels, follow me on Twitter & Instagram: @myarabinee1995

Welcome to the first edition of my blog that I will be writing to keep you updated on all of the new technical projects that I am working on, as well as my photography endeavors and anything else I encounter and learn along the way.

A little more information about myself: My name is Michael Yarabinee, and I am a freelance live lighting and sound designer based out of the Delaware County/ Philadelphia area. I currently am the Technical Director for a local high school theatre group, as well as the sound and lighting coordinator for a handful of other theatre organizations. In what is left of my free time, I am also a Disc Jockey, Photographer and Videographer. Photography has always been yet another prominent interest of mine and recently, I've started publishing my work to my newfound website: http://michaelyarabineephotography.me.

I look forward to keeping you updated on my latest ventures, and I sure hope you will join me on the journey that I get to call my life!