Bounce Flash: Lauren Young, president of the MU Ballroom Dance Club, pauses to think through the footwork while helping Cameron Olsen with a Cha-cha routine during the club's weekly beginners' class on Sunday, Oct.18, 2009 in MU's Mark Twain Ballroom. As president and member of the club for four semesters, she helps teach the beginning students, but teaching the lead can be confusing. "I have to think about the guy's part because it's the effectual opposite [of the women's]," she said.
Direct Flash: Beginner dancer Madeline Komes checks her partner Andrew Bunge's footwork while they practice American style Cha-cha at the MU Ballroom Dance club's beginners' class on Sunday, Oct. 18, 2009, in MU's Mark Twain Ballroom. Both started learning ballroom dance this semester. For Komes, ballroom is an extension of years of competitive dance experience while, for Bunge, it's an experiment in "being a renaissance man." He practices Pretto's principle that one can do 20% of the work to get 80% of the results. "I'll do this for about a year. Then, I'll move to something else, like martial arts," he said.
This assignment is a demonstration that practice makes…better, at least. Originally, my idea was to go to the renaissance fair on the Fairgrounds, but I realized that there was probably too much light for me to overpower and that the content would probably look unnatural with direct flash, but while I was at the fairgrounds, I saw that they were having roller derby later that night. As a former women’s rugby player, I have an affinity for rough female dominated sports. So I decided to try it. When I got there, I realized my first problem: the ceiling was too high. I thought I could use bounce flash off of the walls and some white mattresses that had been taped up against them (see the first few shots), but the strobe wasn’t strong enough for how far away from the wall they skated. So, for the first shoot, the photos were primarily direct flash with a few bounce flash attempts off of my white sweater (also failing).
One of the biggest difficulties I had with this first shoot was that the strobe just wouldn’t fire sometimes. I’ve figured out now that it was that the strobe needed to recharge, but as you can see, I kept trying. Also, I had the camera programmed to shoot series of photos so it fired without the flash sometimes if I held the shutter down. Otherwise, it was just a practice in avoiding distracting shadows.
My second attempt went much better. I knew that Mark Twain Ballroom has reasonably low, white ceilings. The lighting isn’t the greatest, but that was an advantage since this was all about overpowering the existing light. I did mostly bounce flash since I had done primarily direct flash before. I have to say that I like it much more. In general, I brought the TTL down by 1½ since my flash tends to shoot hot. I shot almost all of the bounce flash having my three center fingers for bounce onto the face. I think it turned out well, and I did better with the direct flash this time too. I angled it further down, adjusted the head of the flash, and powered the flash down further. I focused mainly on one girl, Madeline Komes, who interested me, and her two dance partners. This also had to do with access since she was on the end of the line, so I would have the most flexibility with lighting her. I also shot the teacher, the president and a few interesting happenings. I’m rather pleased with the results.
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