Aguacero

I’ve been a little lazy about posting lately I know. I’ve been wrapped up in a video project that still has a ways to go. I’ll post a small clip sometime in the future…

Anyway here are some shots by the group Aguacero, an Afro-Puerto Rican bomba music and dance group. I really enjoyed this show. There was a lot of movement, great rhythms and fantastic singing. This form is very improvisational. The dancers will move how the drum makes them feel and with their movements, call for accents or beats from the drummers. There’s this great interplay between the dancers and drummers that was really cool to watch. It makes me want to try learning this music but I already have too many neglected instruments as it is. There’s never enough time in the day is there?

This show had constantly changing light levels, often to an extreme degree, and dancers that would go in and out of spotlights in the matter of seconds. Many times there was no chance to adjust exposure so I just shot and figured on making some adjustments in post. Sometimes it really amazes me how much you can pull back the highlights of the D3 images and still have something usable.

I left my iso at 3200 and f/2.8 with a shutter speed that varied between 1/100 and 1/200 sec. Most of the shoot though, I concentrated on capturing motion blur of the dancers. For those I brought my shutter down to around 1/10 to 1/40 depending on the speed of the movement.