Tango!
Tango!
I was fortunate to be given the opportunity to photograph the bi-annual Tango in the Spring event held over last weekend at the Albert Hall. The event, which runs over four days, attracts some of the top Tango dancers from around the country. There are workshops and Practica each day and a Milonga each night. I photographed the main dance (or Milonga) on the Saturday night.
The lighting was very dim and I was shooting at the far end of practical for my camera. This was great for the atmosphere of the dance but it was tricky to photograph in. To give you an idea I was frequently shooting at ISO 10k+ at f/1.6 and f/2.8 and just managing 1/60th of a second exposure. I had to learn how the dancers moved to be able to anticipate where they would be and when. Also, the colour of the lighting (apart from being dim!) was orange and I had some tricky manoeuvring to do in post to pull out something that resembles a white-balanced image ;-)
It was a great night and the dancing was superb!
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Time-Motion Study: Dance
On Saturday night I had the opportunity to photograph some of the show events at the 2015 Canberra Latin Dance Festival. The festival organisers had engaged a photographic team from Sydney to do formal coverage of the events and dance exhibitions and I volunteered on the day to offer to take some creative arty pictures. The event started at 8pm and was very well attended. There was a stage and seating and a large(ish) (too large I think) area in front of the stage where no-one was permitted ... not even the formal photographers!
I had imagined that I would be able to get quite close to the action and to this end I had packed my Lensbaby and wider primes to get as you say creative. Seeing as I couldn't get close my wider selection was almost no us ... I mean I was simply to far away from the action. I did have my 70-200 with me and I ended up using this for most of the night. As I was taking pictures of the performers I began extending the exposure time to deliberately blur their movements and flow. I had my tripod with me and so I zoomed to an area of the stage with black background and set about tweaking until I got nicely lit 10 second exposures. I got a lot of duds ... but we won't talk about those today ;-)
I was impressed with the way they came out. The ones above show flow and transition and a closer examination reveals faces and hands and the ever-present specular highlights of sequin and spangle. It's almost as though you're capturing the essence or the spirit of the dancers with these ghostly images. I think I am going to have to do some of these ... perhaps under more controlled conditions.
Here are some featuring spins and twirls...
The conversion of some of these into monochrome lends an ethereal feel too I think.