The 2016 Utah Star Ball ballroom dance competition was a wonderful experience.  I enjoyed the all comradery and excitement.  I was lucky enough to help behind the scenes, and it was an amazing undertaking.  And, to be honest, rather grueling.  Where in the world does Martin Skupinski get his energy?  I swear he is everywhere at once.

I love to dance and I love to photograph, and the studio activities and Utah Star Ball give me an opportunity to combine my passions.  So how do I feel about this year's event?  A bit worried, at the moment, I admit.  I have just started to sort the images.  I am worried about the competition shots.  However, the portraits are showing promise.

I feel like I was really off my game this year, and I am worried about the venue lighting.  First, I didn't manage my camera as well as I might.  Second, I wasn't able to take advantage of my dancing skills to leverage my photo compositions.  I did not sleep well the night before, and I think it hurt me.  And then the hotel ballrooms are lit for evening ambiance, not photography.

Obviously, the first key to success is to manage your camera.  And I kept making rookie mistakes.  I was switching settings between competition shots, group shots, and portraits.  Sometime later I would find out that I hadn't changed them all.  The worst cases are going to be competition shots taken with portrait settings.  I'm more than normal blurry images.

I think one of the things that makes me a better-than-average photographer for the ballroom dancing is that I dance it.  I can see it coming, almost as if I am dancing with the couple.  But I just didn't feel like I was keeping up this time.  It was frustrating to watch good shots go by and then press the shutter on the dancers backs.

Lighting at the hotels is pretty poor.  My camera is definitely one of the better for low light, but the natural room lighting was much dimmer than might be desired.  The hosting studio, Ballroom Utah, had brought in extra LED stage lighting.  It helped the exposure, but I know it was affecting the colors.

The thing is, a great subject is a great subject even if it is grainy and theatre-lit.  In fact, that sometimes adds to the authenticity.  So I am sure that there will be some gems.  But at a frame count of  5,022 shots, I may be shifting a lot of overburden.

I am encouraged by the portraits, though.  I did a much better job of composing my frames this year, so more images will crop to the standard 8x10 format without losing toes, fingers, and hair.  And there are not as many shadows from one dancer onto their partner.  From what I have seen, I should be able to get very good results with minor tweaking.

Some of the portraits really excite me.  I would like to do some offline shots where I could take my time to optimize the lights for each shot.  And manual focus right on the eyes with a slightly shallower depth of focus.  And for some reason I have strong emotional response to some of the images.  It would be nice to have the time to customize the experience for each individual.

But it is what it is, I suppose.  There's something to be said for the energy of being at the competition even if it comes at the cost of a bit of technical perfection.