Bboy Jam: Filthee Feet 10 year Anniversary 2011

I came out to this one because a friend I haven't seen in years was competing in it.

Now, I shoot in night clubs a lot, and I've shot performance dance before, so I thought I would know what to expect.  This was totally different though.  People communicated to eachother through the power of dance.  Everyone was a bboy (bgirl?), and they were all dancers.  I was pretty much the only spectator, an outsider entering their world to document the unfolding events.

Seriously, it was weird.  No rules (that I could understand anyhow), people got right up to the dancers, forming a circle.  Now, I've seen this when I went to some clubs and parties where they had breakdance performers, but I thought that was just because it gets pretty cramped at a club.  No, this was a big gym with plenty of space.  It's just how things are.

Some details:
Apparently this was for something called the IBE Qualifier.  Some sort of international breakdance competition, and the top 8 bboys in Canada will go to Holland for a convention called "Notorious IBE".

See the full photo set at: Flickr

Nerd Stuff Below



Equipment:

Canon 7D
Canon 70-200mm 2.8 IS II
Olympus H.Zuiko 24mm 2.8

What I SHOULD have brought:

Canon 7D
Tokina 11-16mm 2.8
Canon 580 EX II Flash

Okay, this was my first time at a Bboy Jam.  I expected camera policy for no flash.  I expected more room.  All wrong: there are no rules at a Bboy Jam.  I should have brought a wider lens, because the crowd gets UP CLOSE to the dancers (like within hands reach).  And people use flash.

Flash would have definitely helped.  The room was fairly dark, and I had to use ISO-12800 at 1/200s with the Olympus.  Manual focus isn't a big deal since autofocus won't work in low light anyways.  Even then I had to push process one more stop during post processing.

There is significant loss of detail due to high iso noise.  Hence, the poor image quality.  Normally I would convert to black and white to walk around the noise issue, but not this time.  I simply desaturated the images in post to reduce color noise.

Next time...

See the full photo set at: Flickr