090815_DiasporaNegra-015-Edit

I shot this incredible concert that brought together several music and dance groups that were influenced by the African Diaspora. There were four groups crammed into the one night and I almost wished that the concert could have gone on for much longer. There was just so much diversity and excitement.

The lighting for this show was pretty dark. Most of the time I was shooting at 4000 iso at f/2.8 with a shutter of around 1/100. To make matters worse, most of the lights were colored or gelled yellow! “White” light or a normal tungsten balanced spot was non-existent. Even a white balance of 2k in post still had a pronounced yellow cast. Argghh.

The first group performing was an Afro-Cuban group called Sandy Perez y su Lade. The dancer had this machete that he was furiously swinging about which of course makes for a great photo. I spent most of my time during this set concentrating on him.

090815_DiasporaNegra-025-Edit090815_DiasporaNegra-021090815_DiasporaNegra-043This photo is of Ensambles Ballet Folkl?rico de San Francisco. This almost looks like a zoom effect but was actually created by a slow shutter speed and the way the dancers happened to be moving.

090815_DiasporaNegra-074-EditAguacero brought the bomba, Afro-Puerto Rican music and dance. I shot one of their shows before and they were great again. I just love watching the dancing and drumming develop right there on stage according to their interaction.

090815_DiasporaNegra-110De Rompe y Raja ended the show with their great performance of “Las Lavanderas”.

And to end the show…

090815_DiasporaNegra-120

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>