Swing Dancing!

[Austin Greene]

I am not an event photographer. I like my comfy land of landscapes, macro, or portraits. That said, I've been frequenting a swing place here in the Sacramento area for a couple months now and thought I'd give photographing one of their contests a shot. I've never shot via bounced flash before, and I've avoided fast-moving settings since the 6D only has a single center cross type. I ended up manually focusing for many of these, so forgive me, folks were moving quick.

Going into it, I thought my best chance would be to set up an umbrella on the stage, and use it to cover a small patch at the front of the floor. Then I tried to use bouncing the flash to fill. Things got tricky, and a few areas got blown out, but I'm curious what you all think. I plan on shooting there again (they tolerated me messing around well), so I'd like to improve the images.

Things I'd change:
- Take off the mini-softbox I had on my flash. In hindsight it makes no sense to have it on, and then be bouncing off the ceiling. In fact, I think I might try to snoot the flash next-time I'm bouncing so I don't get falloff onto nearby subjects that is blowing them out.
- Forget bouncing all together. Set up a second flash stand on the opposite side of the stage and shoot dancers caught in the middle of my devious trap. (Flash fill/edge, one key).
- Drop the ISO even lower, bump the flashes. (Most were shot between ISO640-1000)

Here are my favorites. I'd really like some general feedback for next go around, I know I'm posting too many for detailed CC.

1. Probably my favorite from the evening.

Untitled by AustinGreene, on Flickr

2. I like it, but his damned black shirt makes him disappear. I imagine having a light on the far side of the stage would help immensely with edge-lighting. I see now that this one is the tiniest bit underexposed.

Untitled by AustinGreene, on Flickr

3. I love the posing here, but I could do without the hotspots on his face. All the dancers were very sweaty by this point.

Untitled by AustinGreene, on Flickr

4. Winners getting announced. Another flash at the far end of the stage would have helped light them all.

Untitled by AustinGreene, on Flickr

5. I just generally like this one. The posing is nice and balanced. Shows their great form.

Untitled by AustinGreene, on Flickr


Thank you for the CC, and in any case, I hope you enjoyed the images! I only shot for about 20 minutes before I wanted to get back to dancing. All were taken with the Canon 17-40. I wanted to use a bit of distortion to exaggerate movements.

 

[tirediron]

Neat! I like #3.