The best camera is always the one you have on you…

- Tien

I had the opportunity to use actual studio lights last weekend at the Cats Corner staff photo-shoot and had this weird sensation that I was somehow cheating on my trusty old SB900s.

Some of the pros of using studio lights for the first time included:

• Way faster recycling time between flashes. There were only about two or three times where the left key or right fill light didn’t fire. Compare that to my SB900s which overheat every thirty shots or so.
• Larger spread of light with the increased power and big soft box.
• Professional looking equipment makes your talent a lot more amiable for posing certain ways.

Of course there were some cons, which included a lot longer time to set-up and take down. This might not seem such a big deal because I had all afternoon to shoot but I can imagine this being a pain if I was pressed for time.

On one occasion I actually knocked over one of the light stands (with the attached light). I blame the short power-cord (small wireless flashes have no cords to trip or pull over) and not at all on my lack of coordination. :-/

I rented a 70-300mm tele-zoom, which makes my camera look less like an apparatus to take pictures with and more looking like a sniper gun. I wanted REALLY BADLY to not like this lens. It’s way too expensive to even think about getting one for myself and impractical for day-to-day shooting. Buttttt alas, I was super impressed with the sharpness and clarity of the glass even when wide-open and the included vibration reduction feature, while being a little bit worrisome while using it (it makes a weird lo-hum whirling sound), made my shaky hands less of a liability over the course of the shoot.

As for the actual pictures themselves, I experimented with going with a more punchy and high-contrast look and set up the lights to have a bit of harder impact (ed. does that even make sense???). I felt pretty content with the results but on closer inspection there were some poses/angles where the lighting produced some weird angled shadows on the dancer’s bodies. Nuts. I’m thinking that I probably needed reflectors or a soft box from the bottom angled upwards. Will investigate.

To check out some of the photos from the shoot, head on over to: http://hamfats.ca/catscorner2012

Anyhoo… later days,

- Randy

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.

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.

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 :)

Tien: Speaking up this year, it has been a heck of a year, probably for the both of us. The start of this year, was the end of my time in Toronto and most of the Eastern scene as I migrated to the west coast, for the sushi, to Vancouver. This was also the year where I started fresh and really committed myself to training and shaping up all the dances I have done; In order of training magnitude: Blues, Salsa, Lindy, West Coast Swing, and Hip hop.

2011 is going to be a hell of a year maintaining this path. I’m just glad Randy has already been down this road, so he’ll understand this upcoming year of complaining, right? ;) The above photo is still my favorite photo I have shot this year; the Solo Jazz competitors all huddled in impromptu just before the music starts at LindyBout IV in Vancouver.

In keeping with our annual tradition photo recap of the past year after the year’s end, here are the photos we love, cherish, holds some sort of meaning, or stashed in our Lightroom closet of the past year.

Here is part one of our favorite photos of 2010 (we split it up in parts so we don’t kill your browser).

Randy: Attending BluesShout the past year in Austin, Texas was a very significant time period for me. Not only was it the first time I have ever been to Austin, but it was also the first time I have ever woken up next to animals in my life. I’ve always been a big city guy, my idea of “roughin’ it” is staying at the Holiday Inn instead of the Sheraton.

When I went to BluesShout for the first time in Chicago, I was not really sure whether blues dancing was really something I really wanted to get into. I was already involved in various dance styles and dance troupes in Toronto and there weren’t even any actual blues dances in my city. What I did know was that I wanted to go to the workshops and learn as much as I can. It certainly did sway my decision making process when Porter Airlines started offered trips to Chicago and had them at a ridiculous promotional rates (btw Porter is the best dance travel airline from Toronto). This time around, the feeling that I had while at BluesShout in Austin was a sense of belonging and purpose – that this dance and this event was for me.

Tien: How could I ever forget one of the memorable and fabulous dance of the year where my pants literally wanted to fly off my seat? Summer in Vancouver is one of the best times to go out dancing in the city. Capitalizing on the success and party atmosphere of the Olympics, there was dancing in the streets on Granville St. The sun shone all summer long and the Company B band tore it up in the finale (along with my pants).  http://hamfats.ca/lindy-hop/dancing-your-pants-off.

Randy: I still believe that Kevin Sue’s small one room studio on Yonge & Bloor is one of the greatest things that could have happened for the lindy hop dance scene in Toronto. The first picture above is of Bees Knees Teachers Mandi, Jasper, and Shannon POSIN’ while teaching a free introductory class. It cracks me up every time I look at it. The second picture are some pictures attached to the wall outside of the studio taken during the Nuit Blanche swing debacle.

Tien: My first opportunity to shoot since returning to Vancouver in 2010, and without owning a camera myself (Thanks Kane!). Swedish instructors Daniel Heedman and Åsa Palm in Vancouver to teach for Rhythm City Mess Around, along with Seattle’s own Mike Faltesek & Casey Schneider.

Link: http://hamfats.ca/lindy-hop/vancouvers-rhythm-city-mess-around

Randy: I’m not a live music photographer – it’s too hard. You have great music playing and you can’t dance and bust-a-groove unless you wanted everyone in the bar/club staring at you or having your camera equipment stolen. I do like these photos though.

Randy: Taken at the first blues dance we held at the Yonge & Bloor studio this year, it is still my go to picture when I’m making fliers and pamphlets for blues dancing.

Randy: TUX – the Toronto University Exchange – is in my opinion the best lindy hop exchange we have in Toronto. How awesome is it when the best exchange is run by volunteer university students. For TUX3, I set up a photo-booth for the friday dance and had a blast letting dancers be themselves. This picture are two of my favorite asians in Toronto – Kevin and Greg.

Link: http://hamfats.ca/photos?album=3&gallery=60