This is the last week of lessons before the DC Area Arthur Murray Summer Showcase. I’m sure the students and teachers are hard at work – finalizing their routines, how they will walk on to the floor, and how to bow to the judges after they finish. This is always a great event! The couples have carefully choreographed steps to their music, and the coordination with their moves and costumes makes for some great photos. Hope to see lots of good dancing Saturday!
With this in mind, let us know if you will be performing a routine this weekend. Of course we will be doing our best to get photos of everyone. However, if you have something extra special planned in the middle of your routine, let us know! Especially if it is something that we will not see coming, we definitely want to get photos of your moment. Obviously we will keep your secret so that the audience does not see it coming. Showcase week is loaded with surprises, and we enjoy seeing them as they happen. Afterwards, the photos really tell the story to anyone that could not make. We are exited for the weekend!
I am busy getting things ready for the upcoming Arthur Murray Summer Showcase. I need some prints to display at the event, and it is always fun to look back and find good images to show. If I get creative, I will add some effects to the posters, but I’m not the best at Photoshop. If I get anything really good, I’ll definitely put it on the blog. For the photos today, I have some photos from the Arthur Murray – Virginia Beach studio. They had a strong representation at the Spring Freestyles event with custom posters for cheering on their students. Additionally, their staff danced two professional shows! We hope to see them again later in the year. Enjoy!
Although they have the longest to drive to our events in northern Virginia, the VB studio is not short on enthusiasm! Being that the staff from these franchise dance studios are familiar with each other, they make it easier for the students attending the event. Undeniably they added to the excitement of the event. Not only did they add to the number of dancers out there, they treated us to pro shows that finished the weekend right!
There are some constants that survive no matter how much photography evolves. Because of standards organizations, we had film speeds in ASA or ISO that now go by light sensitivity on digital cameras and F-stops for describing aperture openings. The softer “standards” that have survived include cropping dimensions of photos for presentation.
Photo Dimensions
8×10, 5×7 – these dimensions are some of the popular frame sizes that are sold here in the US. When my customers start looking at purchasing photos, these are the sizes that they purchase the most – why? These are the frames that are available in the decorator and craft stores. The problem? Look at the files that are coming out of your camera at this time. If you have a DSLR, the dimensions of the files that it makes are 4×6! This goes back to the days of film. 35mm film was the most popular consumer and small-format professional size of film that was available. For this reason, manufacturers keep the form of the cameras and the lenses the same as film cameras. With this in mind, most sensors have retained this ratio.
What this means is that if you want to have an 8×10 photo that is printed edge to edge, you need to crop your image files. Cropping is much easier in software than after the photos has been printed. It is non destructive, and it can also be used to improve composition of your image. To make an 8×10 image, the original file needs to be cropped down from 4×6 to 4×5 to fit on the page without borders. Here is an example:
The 4×6 crop is more “panoramic” with a long dimension left to right in the frame. This is popular for landscapes and can give a better sense of scale. To fit this image into an 8×10 frame, however, a crop is needed. In trying to keep it close to the original composition, I didn’t move the frame in the software and came up with this:
The frame looks much different to me! Even though printed it would be a “larger” photo, I think it feels more cramped. It doesn’t convey the open space that the photo was taken, it seems like many of the elements are much closer together in the frame – the house in the background with the box in the foreground. Now changing the 8×10 crop to a portrait mode (where the longest size run up and down) the background house is a much smaller part of the images, an the emphasis goes back to the foreground. The best part is that you can change these easily in software until you really find the photo that suits you best.
