Didn’t bring extra flashes or umbrellas this time around as I was in Toronto predominantly for work and had to pack accordingly. I stuck with a fairly light setup of one SB900 with flash bounce card and rented a canvas stand and “vintage” backdrop from Vistek. Putting it all together was a breeze, maybe five minutes tops with some help from two tall peeps (curse of a filipino) to raise the stands as high as it can go. There were a few close calls with the backdrop falling on people but that was because they stepped backwards onto the stands hehe.

An interesting situation happened – my two flash cards were nearing maximum capacity about half way throughout the night. I had to switch from camera RAW files to FINE JPG to squeeze out the last fifty or so photos. I’m not sure what the arguments are for having the photos compress directly to JPG but I was unimpressed with the results. It looks just a bit more washed than I would have liked but I will have to re-test for my next event so I know it’s not actually my post-processing that’s affecting the quality. Still, it was a great option to fall back to when the only alternative was to pack it in.

Till next time.

Shooting dancers is a heck-a-luva lot easier than non dancers – they already know how to have fun and enjoy themselves. I shot famous Toronto lindy hoppers Dan and Stephanie a month or so back at the old Distillery District in Toronto on a “cloudy with a chance of rain” afternoon. The shoot was to commemorate their engagement and total lunacy for each other. I’m not going to lie, I get squeamish with P.D.A. but not this kind. It’s like their in a movie or something.

Tien is here in Toronto for the week for work and we’ve been geeking out on our old photos and analyzing the way we have been learning photography – which more or less has been trial by fire. One of my goals in the next coming while is to actually curate the photos that we have taken and actually make a nice viewable and breathable page out of it rather than a cluster of photos all together. With that in mind, I have remove the photo section of this site so Tien and I can get our hands dirty in the next month or so and pretty much go through our bazillion on edited photos and try to find some decent ones to showcase. This is gonna suck (read: time suck) but sometimes you gotta get make a mess to motivate yourself to actually clean it up.

Oh ya, I’m moving to Montreal at the end of the month so expect some fun debauchery en francais soon!

Peace,

FreshRandy

So I’ve been gobbling up photography books and making sure I do my homework on popular photoblogs and what all the experts say is that I should build a rapport with my subjects to make them feel more at ease when taking shots of them. The problem is, this only works if you are less awkward than your subjects. You see where I’m getting at here? So I thought of a new tactic tonight while shooting some class photos for the Toronto International Academy – basically be the “barely-there camera button pusher man” and let the subjects do all the work themselves.

Ahh… to be a paid “professional photographer” is a sweet, sweet job.

This past Saturday I was lucky enough to have been asked to teach a blues dance lesson at the QSC 10 Year Anniversary party. I always have a healthy bit of skepticism when events ask me to teach because there are so many great instructors in the eastern Canadian cities of Toronto/Montreal/Ottawa but any chance to influence how university dancers perceive a dance is always a worthwhile endeavor. I’m a bit of a square when it comes to dancing so I prefer a non-molesting dance approach (heh) and if organizers want to fund my Gam Ja Tang addiction, who am I to argue.

I was messing around with my new ring flash for this event (just a cheapo plastic one). The ring flash softens the light around the subject creating this neat little halo-cutout effect that’s a bajiliion times better than shooting with the flash straight on. Unfortunately, if a subject wears glasses, you can very clearly see the ring of flash reflecting off their lenses and completely blocking their eyes! D’oh! Now I know for next time.

Thanks to Alice for inviting myself and Genevieve for teaching with me last minute and Kevin “Fats” Temple for hosting us Toronto-folk and just being his lovable Fats self. I wish I had gotten a video of him and Kathleen blues dancing so hard that no-one else even got up to dance and instead just watched the entire time. The best part was when the dance floor was made of ice… don’t know what I’m talking about? Attend next year…

Quick story time. The Yonge & Bloor dance studio where I run my blues dances at doubles as a private high school during the day. The school mostly consists of korean high school students (on a tangent note… gam ja tang… you need to try it) here in Canada to study english and Nayoung (who owns the building) has been very accommodating in letting us dancers call the studio a home away from home. One day while geeking out on Facebook at the studio, in comes a meek korean girl asking if I can take photos of her art work. Of course being asked personally to take a photo of something is like asking me if you want to dance – the answer is always “YES” followed up by, “right now right?”. The korean girl was super thankful for the work I was doing and multiple times tried to offer me money. But this was one of Nayoung’s students, I didn’t want to take money from a sixteen year old girl for something that took literally only ten minutes to do. I politely declined.

Yesterday I stopped by the studio on my flier dropping off spree and Nayoung gave me a bag with a small gift from that korean girl. Included in it was this very funny note (at least to me) addressed to “photographer”. I had a flash back to the first time someone asked me what I do and I answered without embarrassment, “oh, I’m a dancer”. Am I a “real” photographer? I’m not quite sure yet but this is a step in the right direction. What is a “real” photographer anyway? Is it just getting paid for your work? A nice ending of this quick story, Nayoung also told me that the young korean girl got a scholarship to an art school based on her portfolio. Good on her. :)

Did I mention that the dance studio is above a Starbucks? I know right!

Lesson 1 – Watch out for flailing limbs/Let dancers know you are there. As photographers, we often do not have hulking gear as videographers do to warn dancers flailing dancers. When you see me from the back when I’m filming, I’m pretty sure I just look like my ordinary self schmuck self standing awkwardly (not unusual in my day to day habitat). In actuality, I’m trying to hold a very expensive but fragile camera very, very still WHILE keeping my peripheral vision aware of incoming bodies and arms.

What I’ve learned from those first wallet-defying experience is that instead of starting your recording then moving out of the way of dancers while filming, I now try to stake claim to a piece of dance floor real-state and making eye contact with the dancers around me. This let’s them know that, “hey i’m here”, and that I’m attempting to film around them. Doing this the hope is that dancers make a conscience effort of not crashing on top of me. Most of the time this is just enough to start filming without having to move so much.

The following video of Patrick Tevlin starts off with me tilting my head and torso (and therefore my arms which is attached to my camera) trying to avoid a not one but two couples.

Patrick Tevlin – Toronto Blues Dance – Blueberry Hill from Hamfats.ca on Vimeo.

Don’t stand so close to the speakers. Unless you have a directional microphone attached to your DSLR, more than likely you are just using your on camera mic. Here’s a very easy lesson that I seem to have a hard time remembering – don’t stand right next to the speakers. :( Just don’t do it.

Tyler @ Dovercourt Blues from Hamfats.ca on Vimeo.

Ginger St. James @ Cadillac Lounge

Ginger St. James @ Cadillac Lounge from Hamfats.ca on Vimeo.

Take some time and frame the shot. This is my curse and dilemma – I want to dance AND take photos AND take videos. Sometimes you have to sacrifice some time away from one of those activities so that you come out with something of quality.

The following video is of one of my favorite bands of all time – the Asylum Street Spankers. I was so AMPED just to hear them live that I just kind of ran up and pressed record on my camera without even thinking of what I was filming. This could have been a really great video memory of a memorable weekend experience but instead it’s below mediocre in terms of quality.

BluesShout 2010 – The Asylum Street Spankers from Hamfats.ca on Vimeo.

The right lens. Most dance venues are badly lit. Because of this, you need some great lens which will allow in some light without a direct source on the subject. Your best bet really are prime lens such as 35mm or 50mm in the 1.4/1.8 variety. I have not use a super wide angle lens but I assume they would be just as great (24mm 1.4). Trust me, your zoom lens will not cut it for most dance venues for video.

Guitar Playing @ Cadillac Lounge from Hamfats.ca on Vimeo.

I think that the most consistent theme that Tien and myself had this year was never actually publishing pictures that we have taken. I don’t know about Tien but I love taking pictures… and then going back to dancing. So I have folders upon folders of pictures that all have some sort of event name attached to them that is stuck in the netherworld that is Lightroom. Perhaps my 2011 resolution is to actually learn how to take photos in order for me to take fewer of them. Does that even make any sense? Ah well, here are a bunch of photos that we like :)

Shot some flamenco dancers at the Spanish Cultural Centre.