The Dance Ensemble: A view from stage right

One of my favorite things to photograph each year is the Dance Ensemble show. It's big. A lot of people come to watch. It's a great example of our students doing something for themselves ... the ensemble is student organized, student run, in a lot of cases, student taught. The range of styles includes R&B, tap, ballet, gymnastics, latin-ballroom. You never know what you're going to get.

Technically, there are a LOT of challenges. The students like to play around with light, colored gels, dramatic effects, and frankly, there's not always a lot of it to work with. You find yourself juggling the three variables, ISO, aperture, shutter speed ... and it's always a compromise.

Like all modern DSLRs, the Canon 7 has amazing low light performance compared to the film of years past. But this is the sort of assignment that really tests the out limits of performance and there are better cameras.

I'm not sure I choose the best compromise this year. ISO was 1600, shutter speeds range from about 1/125 to 1/80. Two lenses were used. The Canon 50 f/1.4 and the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8. For the 50, aperture was generally at about f/2. For the Tokina, f/2.8. 

But there are some fun and interesting photos here. Post processing was done quickly for the web. They've been downsized, a sharpened fairly hard for web viewing. A good bit more might be pulled from these files.

A lot of shooting was done from the wings stage right. The other location I used a lot was in front of stage left.

I had a student worker do a lot of shooting at the event ... backstage of preparations, and from the wings stage right and in the front stage right. She was using a Canon 85 f/1.8. So there should be a different perspective when she gets her photos in. (I'll update this entry with a link then.)

Click on any image to see them larger.
Some youtube videos of this year's event.