Dance Around DC

Dance Around DC, a set on Flickr.

Last Sunday I attended another Millennium Stage concert at the Kennedy Center. The concert, Dance Around DC was presented by Dance/MetroDC. The concert featured performances from DCypher Dance, Brown McCauley Dance, Tehreema Mitha Dance Company and Flamenco. Each of the performances was filled with loads of energy from the dancers! It is this energy that draws me to photograph the dance concerts on Millennium. Freezing this energy is the pleasure that I take out of the photographing experience.

The first performance, Chaseology, preformed by DCypher Dance featured music by Ryan Leslie "Zodiac", Janet Jackson "I Get So Lonely Remix", Angie Stone "Wish I Didn't Miss You", and Toni Braxton "My Ring's Too Heavy".

I shot this performance with my 50mm mostly at f/1.8. The lighting was dim so I increased my ISO valued from 800 to 1600 (the max value of my camera) in order to freeze the fast movement of the dancers. I maintained this value for the rest of the concert.

ReSuitened" the following performance preformed by Brown McCauley Dance featured classical music by J.S. Bach: Allegro from Sonata in C major; BWV 1005 and Prelude from Cello Suite in C Major, BWV 1009. I shot this performance with my 85mm between the f/2.0-2.8 range. There was more ambient light in this performance so I had the opportunity to shoot with a faster shutter speed. The additional ambient light made this performance a little less difficult to shoot IMHO.

The third performance, Tillana Des Malhaar was performed by the Tehreema Mitha Dance Company. The dance of this particular performance known as the Tillana is a Indian classical style dance that has no storyline. I kept my 85mm lens on and shot this performance at mostly f/2.0.

For the forth performance, "Del Amanecer" preformed by Flamenco Apericio, I used both my 50mm and 85mm lenses. The movement of Flamenco style dance is quite fast. I definitely pushed the buffer on my D50 to its limits during this shoot. Of course, it probably didn't help that I was shooting in RAW either.

Like the first performance, the final, "Push Play", was preformed by DCypher Dance. This performance had quite a few participants so I decided to use my 35mm f/2. Like the first performance too, there was little ambient light. As a result, I used the aperture of f/2 for this shoot. At f/2, my 35mm can be a bit soft/ dreamy, (it gets better at f/2.5) but in this case, I wanted make sure that I had fast enough shutter speeds (at least 1/500 sec) to freeze the fast movement of the dancers.

Adams Morgan Day Festival

Adams Morgan Day Festival, a set on Flickr.

On the afternoon of September 11th, I attended the Adams Morgan Day Festival in DC. I want this set to reflect not only the sights of the festival but also a little bit of the Adam's Morgan quartier of DC including its habitants and establishments.

Anyways, the festival had music and dance performances, ethnic and American style food, and a number of stands selling arts and crafts. Being a warm sunny day DC, there was plenty of people at the festival, although the number of people who attended seemed to grow later on in the afternoon. Here are just some random details I remember from the festival. I remember seeing a lot of red balloons. Someone must have been giving them away. The karaoke singers seemed to be having a fun time. There was a police officer who sang the Frank Sinatra song "New York New York." The Brazilian style dancing was fun to watch as was the African dance music concert. Last year I missed the festival as I was out of town so it was nice to make it this year. I had a real fun time.