September 3, 2007

Back in New York City - Early Morning Pictures from Central Park

I moved to New York City! At least partly. It will take about a month or so to really move.

I went to Central Park this morning at about 6 am. The park was empty. I don't know if it was because of Labor Day or it was just very early.

Here are some pictures I took. Click thumbnails for larger images.

I took the picture of the nicely manicured ballfields being watered by the sprinkler system because I thought it was amusing how nice the Great Lawn was maintained. When I grew-up, I played many soccer and football games on this field and, back then, it was mostly dirt and rocks and difficult to play on. Now it's perfect.

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April 13, 2006

My Flickr Dance Pictures

I've bookmarked my favorite dance pictures on Flickr.

Following text sign created with "Spell with flickr" [via Lifehacker]:

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March 28, 2006

Picture Blogging for Dancers and Choreographers

Blogs can be a good marketing tool for dancers and choreographers. But it can be time consuming to write a few posts per week to ensure that readers keep coming back to your blog.

So instead of focusing on a text-based blog, you might want to consider creating a blog that primarily consists of pictures and brief passages describing your pictures. This type of visual blogging is ideally suited for the world of dance and once you get the hang of it, you can take pictures and place them on your blog fairly quickly.

The trick is for you to be able to take good pictures of your rehearsals and performances as well as casual shots of dancers hanging out. The problem is that it may not always be possible, from a legal or contractual standpoint, to take pictures of dancers - this is something that you will have to look into.

For example, I haven't specifically asked her, but on Kristin Sloan's picture blog, "The Winger," she takes very, very few pictures of dancers - Kristin is with the NYC Ballet. My guess is that she is not permitted to take pictures of rehearsals or performances and so takes pictures of other things.

So hopefully, you're in a position where you don't have similar constraints. I think a dance-focused picture blog would be a lot of fun and very captivating.

If you want to explore creating a picture blog, here's what you need:

1) A digital camera or a good quality camera built-in to your cell phone.

2) A blog.

3) A way to add pictures to your blog. There are two possible ways to add pictures: you can transfer a picture to your computer, edit it and then upload it to your blog, or you can take a picture with your mobile phone and email it to your blog.

I'll write more about the specifics of how this process works, but for starters, you can read my post from last week on how to create a blog with TypePad or Blogger. Both of these weblog software programs let you add your pictures. In addition, some bloggers add their pictures to flickr, and then pull the pictures from Flickr into their blog.

You can even set-up Flickr so that you email pictures from your phone to Flickr and then Flickr sends the pictures automatically to your blog. A similar service is called SplashBlog, which also automates the process of sending pictures from your cell phone to your blog.

If you have specific questions about creating a photoblog for dance, please let me know.

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March 20, 2006

Video Introduction to Contact Improvisation

Here's a 2003 video clip, "Contact Improvisation with Karl Frost," directed by David Olivari. His david-o.net blog (French) covers his multimedia dance work.

This clip features an interview with dance instructor Karl Frost about contact improvisation interspersed with video from a class he teaches. It's a perfect way to get introduced to this form of dance:

Here are David's photo sets from Flickr. You'll notice that there are a number of sets that cover dance and especially contact improvisation.

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March 3, 2006

Pictures from "Who's in Control" Program

I happened to stumble across these pictures on Flickr taken by floorvan from last weekend's "Who's in Control" program that I attended.

Here's a shot of Arthur Elsenaar preparing to have his facial muscles activited via electrical jolts sent through the electrodes you see attached to his face.

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October 18, 2005

Where Are the Pictures of the Dance Performance?

There's an August 8th post at uncoy.com, "Dance Publicity Photographs: Promotion of Dance in the Press," by Alec (don't know last name) that caught my attention:

I am often disappointed with the dance photos which I am able to present with the pieces at Impulstanz. Unfortunately modern dance companies believe that the audience has no right to see what the show actually looks like. They provide their own publicity stills and do not allow newspapers or anyone else to take photographs of the actual performances.

While I understand these dance companies would like to protect their image, at the very least there should be an official Impulstanz photographer shooting every show in rehearsal and offering the company director or manager to approve or disapprove shots from the rehearsal photo session. The technology exists.

Reviews of the work would be more vivid and useful for all concerned with accurate photo materials which correspond to what is actually on stage. Newspapers would probably be happier to run newsworthy photographs rather than somebody's contrived poster piece. While I understand these dance companies would like to protect their image, at the very least there should be an official Impulstanz photographer shooting every show in rehearsal and offering the company director or manager to approve or disapprove shots from the rehearsal photo session. The technology exists.

Alec raises good point about the paucity of good quality pictures of modern dance companies. I'm often annoyed when I'm searching online for upcoming dance performances. A huge percentage of the time, I come across a very brief one to two sentence description of a dance performance -- no extended descriptions and no pictures. And the odds of finding a video clip are next to zilch.

Yesterday, I wrote about an upcoming dance performance by the San Francisco-based Capacitor. This dance company actually provides high-quality pictures online, a video clip and a detailed press release about this performance. The availability of these resources should be part of the standard promotional campaign for all dance performances. But, sadly, this is not the case.

To me the lack of engaging online marketing materials for upcoming dance performances is inexplicable and I have trouble fathoming its causes. Don't dance companies need larger audiences? Aren't most dance companies struggling to increase fund raising efforts? And don't dance companies want more exposure in the press???

Posted by Doug Fox at 9:59 AM - Permalink | Comments (1)

October 11, 2005

Photo Blogging with Kristin Sloan of NYC Ballet

Kristin Sloan, a member of the New York City Ballet, maintains a picture blog of her dancing and travels. Using her Sony Ericsson S710a, Kristen takes shots of dancers, rehearsals, venues and more.

Kristin's caption for above picture - June 20, 2005: "The fairies in "A Midsummer Nights Dream" all wear super-long fake braids that get attached to our normal hair-do's. The ends then get safety-pinned to our costumes, so the heavy whip-like things don't take us out when we do a big jump or turn. It must have been pretty painful before that cool little trick was implemented."

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September 23, 2005

The Wandering Salsero

Art Williams of the WanderingSalsero blog keeps busy experimenting with digital video and pictures. Go take a look.

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