Many years ago I spent a good deal of time photographing burlesque dancers and enjoyed capturing their moves and costumes etc. I stopped when my feet got too bad to stand for long periods of time. Fast forward 10 years and two surgeries, and I found some dancers at the Wellington Lantern Festival and was instantly hooked again.
I love capturing movement, light and dance. The LED capes/wings that the dancers from Society Event Entertainers were wearing were shimmering in the dark and providing those watching with an awesome display of movement and light. It is very similar to the light painting images I was creating with the crystal balls. The difference being these were not taken with long slow exposures.
I first came across the dancers around the back of Te Papa where they were posing for photographs and a couple of the girls did a twirl for me. I really appreciated their taking the time to do that as before I knew it, they were all heading off to the main stage. Their organiser gave me her card to ensure any images of the girls shared online were tagged with their company name. I am more than happy to comply with this request.
She told me when the girls were performing on the main stage so we quickly checked out the rest of the lanterns before heading back to their next performance. There were so many people there I really struggled to get a good spot. I started shooting from the back of the crowd with my camera held high up in the air. This was extremely hard on my arms, but I managed to capture some interesting shots using this method.
Then as I was about to give up and head back to the train, a fellow photographer called me over to a position beside the stage. It was a clear space and all I had to do was wait for the girls to spin or face in my direction to capture some really great moves. We spent as long as we could clicking off the shutter almost non-spot, before time forced us to leave to catch our train home.
I had no idea if the images I had shot were going to be any good. It was really dark and I was hand-holding the camera with my shaky hands. I was super amazed the next day when I started processing them and found almost every shot was usable. Hats off to Panasonic for the Lumix G9, as I am super impressed with the way the camera performed in very trying conditions. I love my camera(s) to bits!
