Monthly Featured Photographer - January 2015

When Nikki came Down Under to DM's house, her older sister Ally came with her. Ally loved the club scene back home, so we set up our own dance floor for Ally to show us her moves.

The original idea was to get some photos but also some video to put on the girls' Youtube channel. There where 2 problems with shooting video. First there wasn't enough light so the video was very grainy and second with the DS-Doll able to stand with the aid of the hang kit, it would be hard to shoot the video without the hang kit showing. Instead I took several photos in each pose, then created a .gif for each move, then put the .gif files into the video editor to create an .MP4.

My DSLR is a Canon 5D mark II using a Canon 28-300mm L class lens on a tri-pod and shooting with a shutter trigger extention. The only lights used were the multi coloured LED disco ball and a 20W cfl black light. There was a desk lamp behind me facing the other way with very little light adding to the pics. The black light didn't do much other than make Ally's beautiful blue eyes glow. The largest aperture on this lens is F3.5, so with such low light the iso setting needed to be higher than preferable. I had the coloured lights on the slowest setting, but with the shutter open longer than 1/2 a second made the colours move too far across the picture.

I was quite happy with how the pics turned out for the purpose of the video and entered one in the November Cat B photo comp "In Darkness" and very much to my surprise it won. Of coarse I have included our winning entry "Ally Rocks TDF" in this selection of my fave pics from the shoot. The only photo shop I have done other than crop and resize is to remove the hang kit where Ally is standing. The hang kit wasn't needed when kneeling. We hope you like them.

~ Dees Man