Today is the last day to view and order photos from these 2013 events. They had previously expired, but were renewed prior to the holidays. Afterwards they will be removed from the website to make more room for 2014 events. If you have any questions, or need any help finding your photos, please let me know! The website for all the photos that are expiring, and the others that will still be viewable is:
These event will be going back into the archive. It will be $40 to have the photos retrieved and re-uploaded to the website later. Thanks to everyone that has visited our website over the holidays to review their images. We are so happy that many of you have found images that you want to have hanging in your house, or posted all over your Facebook pages. We hope that you continue your dancing, and we catch you on the dance floor again this year!
It has been a while since I posted some ballroom dance photos! There are a few of the professional shows from the 2013 Arthur Murray Fall Showcase that I have not yet featured on the blog. Today, I will post photos from the Swing show by the Silver Spring, MD studio.
This show had a lot of fun personality! There was a great playful character to the dancing that had a lightness and quick action that was fun to watch. This was a great display of Swing technique by these two that really made for some great photos.
The Swing is a dance that brings lots of people into the studio. It can be done to a lot of modern and classic rock music, so it has a familiar feel to all levels of dancers. These two put on a nice display to inspire students to continue learning new figures.
The speed of the action of this dance had great movement in her dress. It was hard to catch in the camera they were so quick! The Silver Spring crowd should be proud of another great showing by their staff.
Every year, the Christmas decorations that pop up in the malls and office buildings in the area signal the holiday season. The strings of lights that wrap around the trees and line overhangs make for some pleasing light. They are usually a very warm yellow, and the many small points of light put together, make it a very soft light in photos. These are great for people photos, which is another reason everyone takes photos by the lit Christmas trees during this season.
The small points of light can also be used to make some unique photos while they are up. Bokeh a Japanese word that photographers use to describe the out-of-focus areas in the background of photos. Having the background completely blurred will help pop your subjects out of the frame. The amount of blur depends on how open an aperture you set on your lens. Additionally how far your subject is from the background affects the blur. If you have your subject a fair distance from the background, and you place your lens very close, you will have a nice out of focus background. If you have Christmas lights in that background, the shape of the lights will take on the shape of the aperture of your lens to make a nice shape with each bulb.
An early Christmas gift from my in-laws was this Bokeh Masters Kit. The kit has hard plastic discs with shapes cut out in the middle of each. There is also another plastic mounting piece that you fit over the lens. When you fit this over your lens, then setup your subject as before, the pin point illumination from the Christmas lights takes on the shape of the disc.
Bokeh Masters Kit
Bokeh Masters Kit
This was the first setup I tried, and it works as advertised! Obviously, I tried the star disc for this image. The boxes were about 5 feet from the tree, and the lens was set to f/1.4. There was a large amount of vignetting from the lens which was expected since the holder was covering a portion of the lens edges along with the disc itself. But you can clearly see the stars from each of the lights.
I will have to try this with other subjects and setups, but this was a good start! With all of your decorations up inside your house and outside in your neighborhoods, there are lots of opportunities to try this out. Thanks to our friends at Encore Ballroom Couture for the gift and still-life subject!
