Festival • Portrait (Photograph)

This image took a couple of hours of work using some natural light photos I took of a latin dancing exhibition at the International Film Festival in East Lansing, Michigan (November 2007). Because these existing light movements came out looking a bit like smoke, and because of the whole “Latin Lover” cliche, I decided on the given title—“Where There’s Smoke There’s Fire”. This couple were great dancers and there was mention that they would be opening a dance studio to teach latin dancing. Unfortunately I don’t have a record of their names, at this point.

Perhaps the images are too small in the montage but I thought it gave a good sense of the dancing. I love and prefer natural, existing light in photographs whenever possible. Of course there is always the inevitable camera shake that will ruin a picture in low light. But movement within a photo is very effective, I think, if the camera is solidly fixed so that the environment does not suffer from camera shake.