I’m a sucker for weird (but not too weird) songs that are highly danceable. Or are they danceable? You tell me.
One of the worst things about the winter is the viral bugs floating around. I swear this winter, half of Vancouver population was infected by a super cold virus, and being dancers it’s a wonder how we even remain healthy throughout the year. I predict, we’ll be the one of the first wave of infections when the Zombie Apocalypse takes hold; but I digress.
The one good thing about having a cold is that it forces me to sit back when volunteering for workshops and really focus on taking photos of the event, and boy is it great to hold on to a Nikon D90 once again. Yippee! This time though, I had a manual prime 8mm f3.5 fisheye lens to play with throughout the weekend. From the photos you will see the fun times I had with it. On one hand, the fisheye lens was a breeze to use, point then click, great photo — most of the time. The trickiness about the fisheye is that the field of view is so large, I have to consider so many factors in the way I shoot, other than the distortion.
- My off-camera flash arm cannot be too far forward
- Bending my body forward at the hips to avoid my own feet in portrait photos
- Where the ceiling-bounce flash hits as the area will show up in photos
- Distance from the subject (you really need to be super close to negate the depth you get in a fisheye)
The results are worth the effort trying to keep track and learn all the tricks on the fly. The next thing I will need to focus on, is nailing the manual focus, and adjusting to using a manual aperture ring as well.
PS. RCMA (Rhythm City Mess Around) 2012 was a blast. The photos above is just a preview of the photos I took that weekend.
Great Photos Tien. I dug the band perspective shot.
Nice shots. I dig what you can do with the 8mm, but the focus is kind of soft.
As I travel, take workshops and meet all these great instructors in the dance scene, I started to realize that they have persevered through many of the challenges we face as growing dancers. We all focus to get us to that next level/tier/awesomeness we forget about what keeps us inspired beyond the moves and techniques we learn. So here I ask, to those we look up to what words/advice do you have for us dancers to keep us inspired, or really what do you want to say to all dancers.
At some point, I may refine upon the ideas, but here is what I have collected thus far.
Lastly, thank you to those whom have participated so far: Virginie Jensen, Steven Mitchell, Peter Strom, Naomi Uyama, Nina Gilkenson, Todd Yannacone, Andrew Thigpen, and Karen Turman.
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.
I did something a little bit different and filmed from the back of the room this time for Followlogie 2012 cabaret competitions. While it was neat to see a performance from the other side and to see the crowd’s reaction, playing it back just feels a bit off. In any case, lesson learned, next time I’ll head for the front of the crowd.
This is the routine of the cabaret winners by the “W-Project” girls here in Montreal. I’m a bit biased but this was definitely kickass (although all the performances were great!).
Definitely danceable, though the first would need a really creative lead. The second one sounds like it would be amazingly fun to dance to – fast, but tons of opportunities for stretch.
Your choice of music is all killer, no filler… as always. Let’s start a dance company. You be the artistic director and I’ll do the other stuff.
The music is great, but I wish that you would provide a list of the songs in addition to the playlist. Once one has played, I can’t figure out a way to get the name/artist easily.
hey Suzanne, great idea. I’ll try to remember it for the next time :-)