Dancing City 2003

[Mark Goldstein]

Hi,

These photos were taken at the recent Dancing City festival held in the Canary Wharf/Docklands part of London. All taken with the Canon 10D and Canon 70-200mm f/4 L lens.

http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk/albums/album62/CRW_2248_JFR.jpg

http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk/albums/album62/CRW_2232_JFR.jpg

http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk/albums/album62/CRW_2262_JFR.jpg

You can view more images from this festival here:

http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk/gallery/album62

--
Thanks,
Mark Goldstein
http://www.markgoldstein.co.uk
http://www.photographyblog.com

[tgwint]

Mark,

Great set of shots. I particularly like the expression on the dancer in the third shot (bottom). Great work.

[TimNYC24]

Mark, very nice job of telling the story of the event in your photos. Keep em coming !

[RedShoesGirl]

Mark Goldstein wrote:
Hi,

These photos were taken at the recent Dancing City festival held in the Canary Wharf/Docklands part of London. All taken with the Canon 10D and Canon 70-200mm f/4 L lens.
--
Thanks,
Mark Goldstein
http://www.photographyblog.com

Mark, the first two images could really use some cropping. The main action in the first image is a long horizontal. Get rid of most of the buildings. The dancers are what is important. Focus on what tells the story best....dancers. Leave enough buildings so you know where you are. The second photo - crop out the stuff on the sides, the lady in the flowered pants on the right is very distracting. The third picture is quite nice.

I am looking at these like a photo editor would....shape and content.

Lara

[henkbos]

#1: could use some cropping, but it would have been better to have more on the left. I assume motion blur of the dancers is on purpose?
#2: could use some cropping on the left
#3: could use some fill in flash

All easier said than done!

[Mark Goldstein]

Hi everyone!

Thanks for the replies and suggestions :-)

RedShoesGirl
In the first image I was trying to show the dancers in their environment, rather than focus on the dancers themselves. Therefore I included a lot of the buildings and crowd.

I agree with your comment about the lady in the flowered pants. I tried to blur the background by using maximum aperture of f/4, but obviously that wasn't quite enough!

henkbos
Yes, the blurring was intentional :-)
I was using the long-end of a 200mm lens (actually 310mm on my 10D) so fill-in flash was a bit difficult!

[RedShoesGirl]

Mark Goldstein wrote:
Hi everyone!

Thanks for the replies and suggestions :-)

RedShoesGirl
In the first image I was trying to show the dancers in their environment, rather than focus on the dancers themselves. Therefore I included a lot of the buildings and crowd.

Mark,

I understand what you were trying to accomplish, but you can do the same thing without having SO much of the buildings. Right now the shot is very busy without a main focal point.

When you don't have faces in pictures there needs to be something very special graphically that gains and holds the viewers attention. In this shot you don't really have that. It is like a snapshot that anyone could have stood back and taken. :)

Nothing to compell the viewer to explore the image more deeply.

I hope this makes sense and doesn't sound too harsh.

The goal of a photographer is to show ordinary events and scenes in an extraordinary way. Show the folks something in a different way than they can see for themselves.

Like I said earlier, I look at images as if I were readying them for publication so my critiques on storytelling images come from that direction.

The third image doesn't really need fill flash....just a little adjusting in PhotoShop would achieve the effect needed.

[Mark Goldstein]

Fair enough! :-)

BTW, are you a photo editor during working hours...just interested!

[RedShoesGirl]

Mark Goldstein wrote:
Fair enough! :-)

BTW, are you a photo editor during working hours...just interested!

Just a "regular joe" newspaper photographer now, but was photo editor/chief photog at one of my last papers.

Since we do not have a formal photo editor here, we have to be able to go through a bazillion images and edit them quickly down to what tells the story best. When there are multiples we tend to look at the assignment "filmically"....wide shots, medium, close-ups - which work together to create the whole package — with each able to stand on its own if neccessary.

RSG