Here are your top instructors! I am halfway through editing the photos from last weekend’s Fall Freestyles. On this occasion, there were almost 9000 photos, so I feel confident they will be ready to view by Saturday. While they are available, you can view the photos at this website:
In the same way that students enjoy rewards, I think it likewise important for instructors. Of course it is nice to hear the cheers from your studio. But it also helps for the marketing of the teachers. Highlighting their efforts to get many students out on the floor for heats, and knowing they are prepared, is great for business! Undeniably the instructors dancing the most heats have more practice in giving instruction and working with students. Additionally, it gives other instructors a goal to shoot for at future events.
Going through the photos from last weekend has me thinking about another consideration when setting my lighting for photography. For one thing, wall color plays a big part in how I place my lights. The Fairfax Ballroom at the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner, VA is the venue where I have photographed the most dance events. It was the first ballroom where I attempted to cover this kind of event professionally. Little did I know that it would become a standard to measure my photos, and how I would think about setting up every other ballroom that host dance events.
Up until last year, the room was mostly unchanged from each of the Arthur Murray events we covered there since 2008. You can see from the walls, there was a reddish-brown striped wallpaper that covered most of the sides. This has the effect of making the room taller – which accentuated the height 2 story ballroom. When bouncing any flash against a wall, the color of the light will change depending color tones of the wall. At this time, it is a strong reddish hue. With the length of the large floor, the effect of the change in tint gets stronger the farther away the subject gets from the flash.
Overall, it makes it more difficult to edit, as you have to make more adjustments to sliders as you edit photos. This slows down the editing process and makes the photos inconsistent between images. With their recent renovations, they made a welcome change to a more neutral wallpaper color. It is consequently making the editing much easier! To compare the results, check out the photos once they are posted at the proofing website, and on the blog here, of course. Back to work for me!
The Fall Freestyles is in progress! We are busy covering event with lots of photography. On this occasion the Sheraton Premiere in Tysons Corner is the venue for the weekend, and things are running smoothly. Of course, we have a great group of photographers helping us capture all the ballroom dancing action. We can’t wait to share all the photos with you soon. As an illustration, here is our booth for the weekend. Stop by and say hello!
EDIT: I have come back to this post to add a little more information. Since I did not have a lot of down time during the event, I waited until now. Simultaneously managing all the photos and blogging while the event is in progress is not something I do regularly. By comparison, it was nice to have some content going up to keep me in the moment. However, I found it frantic trying to get it posted! I’m going back to editing so I can get these out to you this week. Stay tuned for updates!
