Monday, February 24, 2014

Street Dancers

While dancers provide the technical challenge of capturing movement on a still frame, placing the dancer within a context that tells the story of a place or customs takes the photographer to that famous level of contextualizing.

From a technical point of view, modern cameras provide the “machine gun” shooting of dozens of frames a second hence the vast choice of choosing the best shot. For an anachronistic photographer like me, 50+ year old film cameras give me the choice of a frame every 3 seconds, which means that I would miss capturing many of the moves of the dancer.  Even then, I have only 12 shots in a medium format camera, or about 25 in a 35mm lightbox... (I say "about 25" since I roll my own film and often it is a guesswork.)  So, either one needs to know the dance, seen that dancer before, or be extremely lucky to capture a shot that goes beyond just a dance move.
I chose 6 shots of dancers each having a distinct character, and a seventh that may qualify as a dance…

      Dancer out of place
Here the “street” is a symphony hall. The dancer was out of place in the sense that the formal attire of the symphonic orchestra overwhelmed her presence. To the eye, her movements were too choreographed and not spontaneous enough. Yet, at a shutter speed of 1/30th and wide opened at f=2, the 85mm Jupiter 9 lens on my Fed-2 camera did freeze a move quite gently. The eye of the dancer and the movement of the fan somehow isolate her from the formal background.



2.       Dancer in control
This one is all emotion and passion. Contrary to the first picture, this one does better not showing the dancer’s eyes.  I often wonder if in a still photo passion is better expressed with “eyes wide open” or “eyes wide shut”…



3.       Dancer who does not like the photographer
Why some artists, when they perform in the street, wonder why people take picture of them?  It seems to me when you have decided to perform in the street,  you have become part of the environment totally accessible to the public. Well, this Turkish dancer in Vienna did not care for the picture I took, which made the picture better….



4.       When all is not harmony
The New York Rockettes are world famous for their uniformity in appearance and their impeccable timing , especially when it comes to their legs. I took this one in New York and upon developing the roll, I realized that the lens was too slow and the 100 ASA too unforgiving for an indoors shot. But while the technical aspect of the picture is poor, it had captured a moment of non-synchrony among these amazing dancer—the legs are totally uncoordinated making the picture an unusual one for the Rockettes! One has to Google “New York Rockettes” to see how different are the pictures they show….



5.       When one can only guess
This is a picture of shapes and monochromatic tonality. The story can be anything, depending on the observer. What I like are the multitude of lines, movement, and public celebration of a sunny day in Baltimore, by the ocean side!





6.       Simplicity and Joy
One of my favorite street Tango dancing moments. Youth, posture, eye contact and sharing of traditions. Nothing fancy in this shot from Barcelona, yet one feels like being there can be a lot of fun!



7.       May be a dance?
In front of a hotel in Montréal. I shot this with zone-focusing my 1935 Russian FED camera, and contre jour. Yes, I do have one of these almost-a-century-old cameras… The lens of course is not coated and has survived an amazing century of human history.  I sometimes wonder how much of the past century’s changes were captured by this lens that had an unknown number of users before me.  I have adjusted the camera’s speeds a few times already, but the old springs (all original) and the fatigue of the steel parts makes all speeds highly unreliable. So, even more fun to see what comes out on the negative after I finish a roll!!
The lady was about to put her scarf on and I guessed that she would do so using the movement of a matador. After I developed the negative, I noticed that there was a man in the frame, which made me think of the bull, and I kept the picture just for the fun of it.




 February 24, 2014

© Vahé Kazandjian, 2014

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