365 Challenge – Day 29 – 20 March 2010 –Scottish Dancing

A new challenge today – event photography. Not something I’ve really had a go at before. the event was the 50th Anniversary Dance of the Derwent Scottish Country Dancing Society – of which my wife is a keen member. I went along to help serve the wine and to take some photos as a memento for the people there.
And an interesting challenge it proved as well. It took place in a large village hall, with the usual strip lighting, which is not good for any photography, let alone photos of dancers with twirling kilts. My flash earned it’s money. Fortunately the ceiling was reasonably low, so by bouncing the flash and getting reasonably close to the action (while managing to avoid tripping the dancers) I managed some decent shots.
Took a variety of lenses as well so that I managed some candid portraits as well as group shots. As a final twist, I went with the light on a couple of occasions and used slow shutter speeds to give a better impression of the dancing than afforded by the flash alone - like this, in fact: