Taverna Ball VI.

The ball season is once again here and the Taverna Ball too. However, this time was significantly different for me, because there were occasions when I put aside my camera and tried to join to the others. In spite of going through dancing course I have never learned how to dance, but this time I have attempted to do mazourka and blues. I don’t suppose I was very good at it but I at least managed not to step on anyone’s feet. My lack of dancing abilities might suggest that I don’t really have an eye for dancers and their movements and therefore I ted to miss many potentially interesting shots, because I simply don’t expect them.

As a part of the programme there were also three performances, the first one by the dancing group Lento, and the other two featuring Armus and Pavlínka.

And now I should answer the question, why this ball should play the role of a lab rat. Well, every time I did my pictures there differently. On the first taverna ball (fourth altogether) I used a flash attached on the body of my camera which I have only used about three times before that. It was also the first time when I have tried to do photos of dancing, which is quite a challenge itself. The pictures have very sharp, contrasting shades thanks to the flash.

On the fifth Taverna Ball I already used off camera flashes and I tried to use the information I got from Zack Arias. at least a bit. The flashes illuminated the umbrellas (which enlarged the extent of the light source) and so they made the shades less contrastive and generally softened the light.

This year there was another round of experiments on the sixth Taverna Ball, when I decided to rely on the abilities of my brand new camera (and overestimated them) and shoot without flash. I used higher ISO and the pictures are a bit more noisy than I would have imagined. Owing to the longer exposure times, they are also capturing the movement a bit more out of focus, but that’s often for the better.

My experimenting happened on more levels this year. I changed the software with which I processed the pictures. The basis is still Capture One, but the second phase of post-production was taken over by Adobe Photoshop instead of Corel PSP Photo, It’s a considerable change, at least for me, and I hope that it will be considerably beneficial in the future, but first I need to learn how to use it.

I have taken pictures of my dancing friends for the third time and I hope it wasn’t the last.