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Stellenbosch University Ballroom Competition 2017

Bridget Ford
Aug 26, 2017
2 min read

I was hired along with a fellow classmate to attend and photograph the 2017 Ballroom Dancing Competition held at Stellenbosch University on the 5th August. I honestly had no idea that Ballroom was as big as it is until I attended this event! So many talented dancers from all over the place, Rhodes, UCT, NMU, to mention only a few. Some gorgeous couples who I have no doubt will dance flawlessly on their wedding day whilst I'll be doing the chicken dance from Jimmy Neutron if my skills are anything to go by.

The Event itself was a new and exciting experience for my, whilst also posing quite a few challenges for me as a photographer. My classmate worked the first half of the day and I worked the other half. There wasn't any artificial lighting in the hall itself, although the hall was quite well lit for the most part. I did still struggle a bit to have my shutter speed fast enough to capture the quick movements of the dancers, whilst having my Aperture as low as my lens was capable and still taking into consideration not making my ISO too light that it would've made the quality of the images atrocious.

I ended up using my 70-200m lens as I was constantly having to zoom in to couples further from me and zooming out to those right in front of me. Judges were often obstacles I had to photograph around and not to mention the keen family and friends supporting and trying to capture everything and anything with their phones, which by the way is perfectly understandable it just made my life trickier. My lens goes down to F2.8 which is where is stayed,my new camera's ISO Capabilities are far better than before and my ISO sat comfortable on about 1000-1600 dependent on time of day - the photographs were still great quality and my client was incredibly happy.

I truly loved this new experience, I learnt a lot about my skills as a photographer and also came to have a new massive respect for these dancers and their amazing skills!