First Nations Dancer

[casil403]

A "Chicken Dancer" taken at Calgary Stampede Pow Wow competition...

[AntZ]

Love the colour. I especially like the 2nd one.

[MoinMoin]

The colours are wonderful - but I like especially the face of the man on the second photo. It's a very interesting one.

[JAS_Photo]

The second one is great! love the colors!

[Michaelaw]

Yep...#2 is the shot in my book. Very vibrant color here and good focus.

[casil403]

Thanks all...I like #2 as well, something about his face really intrigued me!

[F8&Bthere]

Lisa, which day were you there?

I was there with my family for the Saturday 3 PM Show and this same guy in your shots kinda stole the show- he was a lively dancer and kept making eye contact and expressions to the many photographers around the stage. His face looks so interesting. I was right up at the stage on the far side with two nearly uncontrollable kids and a stroller. Almost anyone there would probably remember us, my 5 yr old son was dancing up a storm and little blond daughter kept trying to get up on the stage.

When we left for the Stampede that day I was not really feeling into photography, so I decided to travel very light and care free- I brought my little K100D and one wide-ish prime lens, the crappiest lens I own, a Sakar 28mm 2.8. What I was thinking I have no idea. So when we ended up in Indian Village just prior to the show I was realizing the only decent shot I'll get is if I'm right up front. Then to top it off, I didn't bring enough memory. About 2/3 of the way through my card I luckily switched from RAW to JPG and managed to squeeze another 60 shots as a result. With this particular camera I would always shoot jpg, but it has a ton of stuck or dead pixels and they get automatically "fixed" during the raw conversion in Lightroom.

I HATE crowds like that (Stampede, not so much Indian Village). Saturday it was insane. I think that's why I wasn't into it as well as why I didn't bring any longer focal lengths (bigger and heavier to carry, can't get far enough back from anything without people in your way).

I decided during the show that since my lens was crap, that I would play around a bit with some intentional motion blur to portray the movement of the dancers and also to play around in post processing with the colourful subjects like this:

[kat]

Love all the colors!!!!!

[F8&Bthere]

It still gets me that you picked this guy, Lisa... For those of you reading this thread, you had to be there. Of all the performers and dancers, that guy somehow seemed to be speaking to us. Before the show started I left my wife seated and went over to the "dressing room" area backstage and I was shooting mainly this same guy. I don't know why, but he kept looking my way and had such an interesting expression. And later when the show had begun and I got back to my wife she had her point n shoot out and focused on... you guessed it.... this same guy. She's a very spiritual type of person, and very interested in the native culture, and felt like she was somehow feeling a connection to him. And I just had to chuckle because I'm not that way really but I felt the same. Now seeing your photos and reading your comments....wow, too much. Maybe he's got some secret ancient powers or something, haha!

[casil403]

Funny F8...I think you might have taking shots right beside me to the left! I was there Saturday for the 3pm show as well! I remember a guy that had a Pentax camera with what I thought was a bit of a wide-ish /big lens. I was sitting on the grass near the front and just right of center and had my Pentax w/ my 70-300mm lens out for these shots! When all the dancers came out, you were on my left and slightly in front of me standing up and shooting I believe. Too funny!

Yeah, there was definitely something about him...I don't know what it was, but I was sure drawn to him! Kinda cool you guys felt it too! I have about 15 shots of him alone, I couldn't take my eyes off him! Unfortunately, buy rear end got quite numb and I was really thirsty with having biked about 20k a couple of hours before, so I only stuck around for the mens buckskin dancing competition and then bailed. I too hate the crowds so decided to head to the barns for a while and stroll around there.