OK. What happened here, at the annual local Arts Council Awards Media Kickoff ceremony? The projector that created this image was broken? The lamp was old?

No, nothing like that. Like fluorescent light, the projector effectively (by virtue of the LCD that blocks the light, or not, and does this for the three primary colours of red, green and blue) flashes on and off at a rapid rate, and if your shutter speed is anything faster than the rate of flashing, this kind of thing will result. This image was taken at 1/2500th second. At that speed, every picture is different, and none are good.

The best strategy is to expose at a multiple of 1/60th second, since 1/60th sec is the power grid frequency and also traditional TV screen refresh frequency.  Multiple meaning 1/60th, or 1/30th, or 1/15th… and so on.

So I shot the second shot at 1/60th second (obviously using lower ISO and smaller aperture):

And hey presto. Good exposure (and just enough back light on the mayor and the award recipient to make it a good picture).

Yeah, I received an award also, for being one of three finalists in the Digital Arts category. The winner will be announced later in the year.

Always nice when my photography is recognized.