Please wait...Flash Work and more- Part 4
The weekend of April 15-16 was Huntsville's salsa festival. John Morey and other experts taught classes for two days and rented the Madison Ballroom for the dance Saturday night. Open dancing started around 9:00 p.m., and there were two breaks for team performances. Seven teams took part, some from Atlanta and some from Nashville, along with three groups from Huntsville.
The dance hall has a nine-foot suspended ceiling, but there is a large structural beam running lengthwise down the middle of the ceiling and hanging down ten inches or so. I was worried about bouncing flash at a low angle, figuring much of it would hit the beam. Worse than that, though, one long wall was entirely floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The dance hall was equipped with strings of bare-bulb incandescent lighting, and John had rented two devices that he placed on the floor of the mirror wall to give a long, soft glow of steadily changing colored light up the wall. There was an annoying strobe light blinking in one corner, but one of the dancers eventually insisted it be shut off because it was flashing right in people's eyes- good guy!
When the lights went down, it was fairly dark in the room, and there were times when the dance floor was very crowded. That meant my shots were often limited to subjects only five to ten feet away. I began experimenting with various angles on the flash head to see what worked best. A shallow angle, say 20 degrees above horizontal, gave fairly good, bright light to subjects ten feet and farther away, really lighting them up when I zoomed to wider angles (using a 17-50/2.8 lens). When I aimed the light directly at the ceiling it worked exceptionally well on subjects close in, especially when I zoomed in tight.
I was surprised that the close shots took on a bit of warm tint as well, so the ceiling must not have been dead white. The warmth was reminiscent of the ones I had taken at Martini's two weeks earlier, although it was limited to subjects much closer to me. I was happy to find that one shot in particular had some real magic in it- I took care of the lighting and framing, but the dancers, particularly the female partner, had the most gentle look on her face and was looking slightly down over her partner's shoulder as she faced me. She was a member of one of the competitive dance teams, so she had made up with very long lashes, which only enhanced the shot more.
When the dance teams were performing, the lights were turned up- nasty flush-mount fluorescent fixtures. I removed the flash and tuned up the camera with a modified fluorescent white balance, then set the camera for high speed shutter (5 fps). I knew from previous experience that there would be a fair amount of motion blur, set at ISO 1600, 1/40 s, f/5.6, but there would also be a significant number of crisp shots when the dancers were in sync with my frames and at the end of various motions. Counting all the performances, I shot close to 1500 frames this way, along with over 1000 frames using the flash.
As usual, it took me a couple of days to post all the images. This round I took time to manually examine every frame I posted, cropping many and enhancing a few as necessary. The frames from the high speed sequences were all opened in Adobe Camera Raw, even though they were all jpeg/fine. ACR let me set up the ideal white balance and exposure, as well as modifying all the frames en masse while they were open. I staggered the posting of the images over three nights, but there were people opening them immediately after I had the first of eight or ten albums posted. Although the hit rate is lower than Birmingham, it looks like I'll have right at 15,000 hits after three nights, and it will probably roll off pretty soon after that.
Between Birmingham and the salsa festival, I got exposure to many more dancers from other cities, along with distribution of my business cards and a handful of new Facebook contacts. Although I have very much enjoyed shooting, and the experience has been invaluable, I have not made a red cent! With any luck, the exposure will land me a paying gig one day... keeping fingers crossed.
BT
The dance hall has a nine-foot suspended ceiling, but there is a large structural beam running lengthwise down the middle of the ceiling and hanging down ten inches or so. I was worried about bouncing flash at a low angle, figuring much of it would hit the beam. Worse than that, though, one long wall was entirely floor-to-ceiling mirrors. The dance hall was equipped with strings of bare-bulb incandescent lighting, and John had rented two devices that he placed on the floor of the mirror wall to give a long, soft glow of steadily changing colored light up the wall. There was an annoying strobe light blinking in one corner, but one of the dancers eventually insisted it be shut off because it was flashing right in people's eyes- good guy!
When the lights went down, it was fairly dark in the room, and there were times when the dance floor was very crowded. That meant my shots were often limited to subjects only five to ten feet away. I began experimenting with various angles on the flash head to see what worked best. A shallow angle, say 20 degrees above horizontal, gave fairly good, bright light to subjects ten feet and farther away, really lighting them up when I zoomed to wider angles (using a 17-50/2.8 lens). When I aimed the light directly at the ceiling it worked exceptionally well on subjects close in, especially when I zoomed in tight.
I was surprised that the close shots took on a bit of warm tint as well, so the ceiling must not have been dead white. The warmth was reminiscent of the ones I had taken at Martini's two weeks earlier, although it was limited to subjects much closer to me. I was happy to find that one shot in particular had some real magic in it- I took care of the lighting and framing, but the dancers, particularly the female partner, had the most gentle look on her face and was looking slightly down over her partner's shoulder as she faced me. She was a member of one of the competitive dance teams, so she had made up with very long lashes, which only enhanced the shot more.
When the dance teams were performing, the lights were turned up- nasty flush-mount fluorescent fixtures. I removed the flash and tuned up the camera with a modified fluorescent white balance, then set the camera for high speed shutter (5 fps). I knew from previous experience that there would be a fair amount of motion blur, set at ISO 1600, 1/40 s, f/5.6, but there would also be a significant number of crisp shots when the dancers were in sync with my frames and at the end of various motions. Counting all the performances, I shot close to 1500 frames this way, along with over 1000 frames using the flash.
As usual, it took me a couple of days to post all the images. This round I took time to manually examine every frame I posted, cropping many and enhancing a few as necessary. The frames from the high speed sequences were all opened in Adobe Camera Raw, even though they were all jpeg/fine. ACR let me set up the ideal white balance and exposure, as well as modifying all the frames en masse while they were open. I staggered the posting of the images over three nights, but there were people opening them immediately after I had the first of eight or ten albums posted. Although the hit rate is lower than Birmingham, it looks like I'll have right at 15,000 hits after three nights, and it will probably roll off pretty soon after that.
Between Birmingham and the salsa festival, I got exposure to many more dancers from other cities, along with distribution of my business cards and a handful of new Facebook contacts. Although I have very much enjoyed shooting, and the experience has been invaluable, I have not made a red cent! With any luck, the exposure will land me a paying gig one day... keeping fingers crossed.
BT
