Posts Tagged ‘Bethesda’

Photo Proofing – Tech Thursday

Standard Ballroom Dance - ©TimeLine Media

Still have thousands of photos waiting to go on the website! I am still working late in to the night and getting up early to get as much time to go through the photos. My email is mostly on hold, and I only check in to social networks sparingly to link to new blog posts from here. This is all because I want to get these photos onto the proofing site as soon as possible. Why does it take so long? The reason is I want the images to look as good as they can before they are released for viewing.

Baltimore Dancesport Challenge

Showcase Dance - ©TimeLine Media
Showcase Dance – ©TimeLine Media

Images that are out of focus and immediately deleted. For ballroom dance and other events, any photos where the hands or other objects are obscuring the main subject are also removed. All of our cameras are set to shoot RAW files. This is a less-refined version of the JPG files that are more common. Shooting in RAW allows us to recover more detail from photos where the flashes did not pop, or to adjust the exposure in post.

Standard Ballroom Dance - ©TimeLine Media
Standard Ballroom Dance – ©TimeLine Media

In setting up the lights for competitive heats, we keep the flashes behind the photographers so they will light the faces of dancers as they pass in front. With ballroom dance floors being very large, there is a gradation of how far the flash will go. If dancers are closer to the photographers, they will be brighter than dancers that are farther away. Shooting in RAW means that there is a lot more data in each file that can be recovered. So to compensate for these differences, I can adjust the Exposure, Highlights or Shadow sliders in Adobe Lightroom to make the photos look similar to each other.

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships

Latin Dance - ©TimeLine Media
Latin Dance – ©TimeLine Media

With the change in the amount of flash, there can also be changes in the color temperature of the photos. We set the cameras to be balanced to the color of the flashes. However if they do not fire, the photos take a very warm, yellow/orange color. This can also be easily adjusted with the White Balance slider. You do not have as much leeway when using JPG files. So again, the RAW files are necessary for this kind of shoot. It does take lot of space on the hard drives, and it takes a lot of time to make the corrections, but I think it’s worth it!

Smooth Ballroom Dance - ©TimeLine Media
Smooth Ballroom Dance – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Sale Ending – Ballroom Dance Photos

Ballroom dance photo - Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media

Today is the last day to get the 20% off early-bird sale for ballroom dance photos from the 2014 USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships! The photos will still be available to view at the proofing website until June, but any purchases will go to the normal rates starting tomorrow. To clear up any confusion, the numbers that are at the website are not heat numbers. They are the numbers of the male dancers (leaders) that were worn during the competition. We tried to determine all the numbers as best we could, but there were a few that we could not find. These are listed as MADC-XX at the end of the collection. To see all the photos you can click the link below:

http://proofs.timelinedc.com

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships

Ballroom dance photo - Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
Ballroom dance photo – Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media

Thanks to everyone that has ordered their prints and digital files so far! I am busy putting in orders with the lab. If you placed an order last week, you should be receiving your prints very soon in the mail. If you do not want to wait to get your photos, the digital files are available for purchase. You are given a link to download your photo immediately after checkout, so you do not have to wait for me to get your images.

USA Dance 2014 Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance 2014 Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media

These are just a few of our favorite images from the weekend. There are many more that I have in the collection, but will post more on the blog in future posts. If you want to help us make some prints for an upcoming event, please visit the TimeLine Media Facebook page where we are asking for opinions on the best collages from the Arthur Murray Fall Showcase professional shows. The two posters that gets the most Likes will be printed large for display at our next event. There are some clear front runners, but is still time to vote! I will count all the Likes on Friday before sending the posters for print.

USA Dance 2014 Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance 2014 Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

Mid-Atlantic Championships Sale Ending

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media

There have been lots of views of the photos from the USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships over the last two weeks! The web server has been busy according to the stats. We are so pleased that so many have viewed and purchased prints and downloads! It helps us to keep working to make the best ballroom dance photos. Additionally it helps us to organize them to make them easy to find for dancers.

Bethesda, Maryland

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media 

Looking back over the photos I was taken back to the image sorting. Undoubtedly this was the hardest part of finishing this event. Of all the ballroom dance events that we cover, the Mid-Atlantic Championships is the hardest to finish. There is such a varied number of categories, and level of dancers, and the heats are very full over the two days. The challenge is to identify so many dancers by their numbers using a combination of photos catching the numbers on the back, the program, and the results pages online. It was a good 4-day job just to complete that! It was a good thing that our lighting setup was very good for the room, so I did not have as much photo editing to do with each one.

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media

Early Bird Sale Ending

As an important reminder, the early-bird sale of 20% off all sales from the event will be ending this upcoming Monday, March 10, 2014. There is no coupon code needed – the discount will be applied automatically at checkout. Thanks again to all of you that have already taken advantage of the sale. I have been busy putting in all the orders and have enjoyed seeing you share your digital downloads on Facebook, Twitter, and other places online! Here is the link to the photos where the sale is ending:

http://proofs.timelinedc.com

USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships - ©TimeLine Media
USA Dance Mid-Atlantic Championships – ©TimeLine Media 

TimeLine Media – www.timelinedc.com
703-864-8208

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