I took a total of 11353 photos at Lindyfest this year. I posted 729 on Facebook and 40 on my Instagram. I thought I'd take this opportunity to talk about my process of making these decisions.
I usually go through two rounds of culling where the program I use allows me to rate photos using a 0-5 star scale.
5 star photos to me are my all time great shots. They're the ones that you should show at my funeral to tell people "that guy was pretty good at this." I might take one of these at an event if I'm lucky. I'm not usually.
4 star photos are usually featured on Instagram. They're either the ones I'm particularly proud of or they fit into whatever I may be writing about in a particular post.
I could say that I was purposely trying to isolate Raquel's reaction mid dance with all this negative space, but this was just luck. Maybe not 5 star luck though.
3 star photos are the ones that get posted to a Facebook album. They're pretty good. Maybe kinda interesting depending on the circumstances, but all worthy of being put out into the world in my estimation.
2 star photos are a miscellaneous grab bag. During my initial run through, I assign 2 stars to photos that are just ok, but want to keep a note of in case I don't end up with better photos of that particular person or moment. After reviews, I tend to knock 3, 4 or even 5 star photos down to 2 because ultimately, I think it's better to have one good/great photo of something or someone than lots of mediocre photos of them.
1 star photos are usually not good, but they're notable, at least to me. Sometimes they just have a fatal flaw that's enough to keep them offline. I took a great photo in a jam of someone flying through an aerial. Unfortunately, I also caught them with a pretty derpy facial expression. I showed it to a couple of people right after I took it. While they agreed that it was an amazing shot, they also said that they wouldn't want it posted if it were them. So that pic is condemned to my archives.
Should I track down that person to get their opinion about it? I've done it enough in the past to know that my gut instinct about these things tends to be correct. Besides, I had 11352 other photos to worry about, and the 1 star pics keep me humble.
As time passes, I notice myself becoming more discriminating. I have to balance my job (when I'm hired by an event) between providing a good array of photos to the organizer and my increasing desire to not contribute (that much) to the digital clutter. I also see more and more people abandoning social media, so I don't like the idea of spending a lot of time editing several photos of a person who may never see them anyway.
I take a ton of really good photos of really good dancers, but after 20 years of social media, I often ask myself what's the point of posting mediocre or even good shots of them when there are hundreds, maybe thousands of photos of them out there already. So I tend to keep photos of the the top dancers to a minimum. I usually select enough to note that they were at the event and maybe a few fun ones like this.
Nathan Bugh and Gaby Cook in the instructor jam on Friday night.
Here’s some select commentary on some of the other ones that I did choose to spotlight.
Do a quick survey of the competition photos I posted, and you’ll probably notice that a majority of them are from behind, shooting towards the audience. Shooting from the traditional audience angle to the stage has its advantages especially with lighting and maybe a band in the background. However, bands don't always react that dramatically to what is in front of them, or they may be just a bit too far back to be really interesting elements in a photo. Also, shooting in the audience will usually limit my ability to maneuver and get slightly different shots. Of course, that varies from event to event.
I also benefited from Lindyfest investing in their lighting as seen here on Samantha Pincus dancing with Chiadikaobi Njoku in the Advanced Draw Finals. She is illuminated both front and back in a way that also isolates her from everything else that's happening. Her face is lit by lights coming from above the stage pointed at the where the contests and performances take place. Those were not there when I first came to the event as seen in the second photo of Kelly Arsenault and Nick Williams that I took in 2019. The reason why an event would invest in lights back there in addition to traditional spotlights coming from the front, is that it helps make the subjects in that part of the dance floor pop just a bit more to the audience and the official event video camera. I’m just taking advantage of the set up. The lighting is not as strong on her partner which tells you that the stage lighting is pretty narrow compared to the front spotlights. It would have been nice if I was able to not cut off her arm at the wrist, but it’s still a great shot to me
This shot shows you the advantages and disadvantage of shooting from behind. The primary issue is that competitors are mostly not facing you. Especially the good ones. However, I’m less concerned about that because, as I noted before, I don’t really need a lot of good shots of the more veteran dancers. I’m also pretty confident in my ability to get at least one like this photo.
Getting a compelling angle of air steps and aerials tends to be hit or miss, but this is a good one of a simple frog jump. Plus there’s the light pattern on the ceiling drawing attention straight to Elaine’s face. That’s from a gobo and not a lens flare, which is what is coming from the spotlight in the corner. There are great reactions from the judges, but the thing that keeps it from a 5 star rating for me is the number of people recording on their phones on the front row.
Contrast that to this shot of Rafal Pustelny and Irina Amzashvili in a jam on Saturday night. Not just a great expression from Rafal, but also great reactions all around the circle with everyone drawing attention back to the center. I specifically decided to shoot from the same side as the band hoping to get something like this from the crowd. However, the lighting for competitions wasn’t on, so I had to use a flash to compensate.
Then there's this one of the Seattle team during the crew battles. Everyone is locked in. If you didn’t know that was a tap dancer, then where everyone is looking provides a clue. The inclusion of the Frankie poster and the Lindyfest logo are nice bonuses.
I specifically decided to shoot from the front for the battles because I thought that there would be too many dancers on the teams getting in the way during the spotlights. Based on how the dancers were arrayed for this sequence, I think I made a good choice.
Ratings for me aren’t just about technical stuff like composition and lighting. There’s also storytelling. Here' a shot of The Right Idea team rehearsing on Sunday afternoon. It’s a pretty standard shot. I got a little lucky catching them as I was walking by. I do love before and after shots though, so I was keen on getting this pose during the actual performance that night. If you watch it, they actually end on this pose. I had my 24-70 mm lens opened to its widest angle to get as much of the scene as I could, but I still had to tilt it slightly to get all of Frankie in the background who compliments the dancers with his own raised hand. Otherwise that arm would have been cut off. That wouldn't have been a big deal, but I think the inclusion tells it’s own story. Combined, these two shots form a sort of mini documentary sequence.
Similarly, these two shots of Irina and Blake go together in my mind because they signal the kind of chaotic fun their dance was in the Advanced/All-Star Strictly Social Finals.
That shot of Irina under her and Blake’s arms is a great frame within a frame, which is really hard to catch in partner dances, especially up close. Quick movements and body parts inevitably getting in the way have a tendency of throwing off auto focuses, but it’s so satisfying when I can get shots like these.
Bryn Anderson & Anthony Chen social dancing on Saturday night
I took a ton of shots of Anthony Chen social dancing with Bryn Anderson, but this is my favorite partly because of the way their arms frame their faces. I love the light creating a subtle Rembrandt effect on Bryn's face and also backlighting her head to help separate her from the background. Anthony was pretty expressive during this dance, but this is a neutral reaction from him here. It doesn't matter to me because Bryn is the main subject of this photo. She's an outstanding west coast swing dancer who came to hang out on Saturday night of Lindyest with her partner, KP Rutland. I've taken a million photos of Anthony, but you don't see such high level WCS dancers at lindy events very often. This is as much of me doing a little photojournalism as it is a nice shot of two high level dancers.
This is a great photo of Annie Trudeau and Rafal, but this is also an example of more long term photojournalism. At one point I thought we may have seen the last of Annie on the national stage, so I thought it was important to capture her back out on the competition floor.
Here’s another example of how to frame a story. The first is my 4 star selection and the second is my 3 star one. Why are they not equal? They’re both pretty good, but this is the Crossover Draw contest where the dancers who placed in the Intermediate and Advanced Draws got to dance with the invitational level dancers. The more interesting story is Laura Spencer who came in 2nd place in the intermediate level to make it into this contest. She’s framed within a frame and is better lit in the first photo. AJ is more prominently lit and composed in the 2nd photo, but he was specifically invited to be here. That’s an accomplishment, but within the context of this contest, I think makes more sense to spotlight the non-invitational dancers.
Most of the above photos are examples of 4 star photos, but here’s some 3 star ones
And I’ll throw in a few 2 star ones for comparison’s sake.
Some of them are pretty close, but I can’t post all of them. A lot of my time goes into making these decisions. Would you have rated any of them differently?