Documentary Task

For this task everyone in the class was assigned a location which were picked at random out of a hat. My location was a ballroom dancing class. This task took a lot of time and planning to make sure I knew where I was going and what I was doing. I also needed to plan the equipment I was going to take with me as for this task I needed a flash gun as well as my normal camera body because of the low light in the room. I wanted to capture the different views on ballroom dancing and not just the normal perspectives from watching a class. The first picture was two separate ones which I collaborated together in photoshop. I did this because it shows the females and males practising their steps however there are no top halves of the body as I wanted to show that many people dance so it does not matter what you look like, its all to do with the steps. The second picture was edited in photoshop and I feel this one did need some editing as I wanted to make the two people stand out rather more than the background. Picture 3 is showing a typical ballroom couples pose and I asked the teacher what other poses the dancers usually do but she said they stay in that one throughout. I shot picture 4 in the break the dancers had. They told me that they all have a 15 minute break for a cup of tea and this is a chance for them to chat. This picture seems to have worked out well as both women are looking at the man in the middle but he is looking at neither one of them. Pictures 4 and 5 are again the learning of the dances, picture 4 seems to show the men marching towards something rather than practising and picture 5 shows a clear diagonal line with the 3 women. This shows the difference between the men and women as the women got straight into lines and worked independently however the men seemed to stay more in a group and had a laugh and joke together. I really enjoyed photographing the ballroom class and it helped me to gain much more confidence with my photography as I was interacting with the dancers as well as standing back and taking my own pictures around them. I feel I have also progressed with my photography as I have tried to capture different sides to the class and different aspects of the people. Whilst looking at documentary photographers I also had a look for dance photographers and came across