[Tango-L] Professional video & photography services

Sat Aug 11 02:14:30 EDT 2007

Hi Sorin,

While I personally have zero interest in the services you describe (and 
so can't comment on the pricing), I might offer a few suggestions 
regarding tango photography generally...

_Permission_
Make damn sure you've got the host's permission Well in advance if 
you're going to shoot during a milonga, so that they can post a notice 
or whatever. I don't want to get into who's got what rights, in the old 
privacy vs. lens-head debate. Some people don't like it, period. That 
should be respected as much as possible. Especially at festivals, where 
it's more of an imposition on out-of-towners who find it a nuisance. You 
can't really expect them to stay home or go somewhere else if they've 
come a long way (and often paid a higher entrance fee) to dance there.

_Studio shoots_
You might try making appointments with people in your photo studio (if 
you've got one set up), so you don't have to work at public events. I 
mean, this is where most publicity shots come from anyway. You'd 
essentially be a regular photographer, offering the DVD thing as another 
service. If you want to go into the a la carte photo business, which is 
what you've described, you might as well do it right.

_Shooting dance_
I'm not familiar with your work in particular, but I've seen a lot of 
tango photos, and they all suffer from the same issues. You basically 
need to be a _sports photographer_ to capture the motion well in stills. 
Go practice at a little league game or a high school football practice.
    Also, for video, shooting from a high angle, unless you're directly 
overhead, tends to lose much of the movement's dramatic quality. Videos 
shot at (or slightly below) the belt-line usually convey more of the 
dance's immediacy, especially because the bodies are in better 
proportion, without undue foreshortening of the legs (where most of the 
movement actually is). No camera can quite replicate the impact of live 
performance, but this will at least get more of the original energy into 
the moving image.

_Tracking_
This last point you may know already... When you're shooting a couple, 
you can (and inevitably do) foreground one or the other dancer by 
tracking them in the frame. The few times I've filmed friends, I've 
tried to be sensitive to this so they get a better result. It can help 
you minimize camera movement too. But it means you have to watch the 
dancing very intently, which it's not always easy to do through a 
viewfinder.

As an aside, I must say I doubt whether your business would be viable. 
Anyone who wants a video or picture of themselves, for casual purposes, 
can give their cell phone to a friend. And screen res is good enough for 
everything but publicity materials. For high res, most of us go to a 
friend with equipment (they're hardly rarities in & around the tango 
communities) or else visit a photo studio.

If you're doing vids for vanity purposes, shooting at a milonga would be 
the wrong way to go for other reasons. Amateurs can shoot at home, do 
multiple takes from different angles, cut the thing together cleverly, 
and get very attractive results. More attractive, at least, than most 
pros could get, with a crowd to negotiate around, and one take of the 
song to nail it with.

There's a nickel's worth anyway.

Jake
DC

Tango Tango wrote:
> Sorin.
>
> Did you seriously expect people to reward you financially for coming in and
> ruining their night?
>
> What you are doing/suggesting is intrusive.
>
> Regards,
> Neil
>
>
> On 8/11/07, tango at bostonphotographs.com <tango at bostonphotographs.com> wrote:
>   
>> As some of you may know, I am a passionate photographer and in the last
>> few months I covered a few festivals and milongas (you can see the results
>> on my website under EVENTS). I have a 9-5 job, as a computer programmer
>> but I'm getting to a point where I'd like to stop doing that. As such, I
>> put some thought into becoming a full time photographer. Part of that
>> research was to see if one can combine tango with photography and try to
>> make some money (not necessarily make a living just by covering tango
>> events).
>>
>> So for a few of the festivals I covered, I offered prints for sale, at
>> what I thought would be a reasonable cost ($3.75 per 4x6 print).
>> Alternatively, I also offered the full resolution files for a similar
>> cost. While I was not expecting much, I was quite surprised to see that
>> among the three festivals I covered (Alternative in Providence, Yale in
>> spring and Boston in June), only ONE person purchased 3 prints. That's it.
>> I was wondering if anyone cared to comment on that. Is this what you
>> would've guessed? I know I would certainly pay to have some good shots of
>> myself. One reason I can think of is that people could see (and download)
>> a decent size picture from the web for free and apparently that is good
>> enough for most people.
>>
>> To try to clarify what kind of future a professional "Tango photographer"
>> and/or "Tango/videographer" might have, I have a few questions I would
>> like to ask the community.
>>
>> 1) If a screen resolution picture of you dancing is free to download,
>> would you have any interest in a 4x6 paper print at $3.75? How about in
>> having the full resolution file for $3.75
>>
>> 2) If a screen resolution picture of you dancing is NOT available to
>> download (but rather just a tiny thumbnail size one or a screen size image
>> with watermarking covering most of the surface), would you have any
>> interest in a 4x6 paper print at $3.75? How about in having the full
>> resolution file for $3.75
>>
>> 3) I was thinking about offering (at festivals and/or milongas) a service
>> to record video of the patrons dancing (on demand). It would work like
>> this, the interested party would come see me, pay a fee (per song), and
>> we'd agree on timing. Then I would record them dance with their favorite
>> partner (using a device that allows me to film from a height of 12-15feet,
>> which would allow me to track them at all times). They would then get a
>> DVD at the end of the evening with a high quality recoding. The price I
>> have in mind right now would be $10 per DVD + $10 for each song recorded.
>> So to have a full 3 song tanda recorded, the fee would be $40. If one more
>> DVD (with the same content) is needed, for the other partner, it would be
>> $10 extra. Is this something you would be interested in? Do you find the
>> price: too high, low, about right? An example of a recording I made is
>> here :
>>
>> http://youtube.com/watch?v=tATLum7aDCc .
>>
>> Obviously the quality the youtube video is abysmal compared with the
>> original file which the customer would get.
>>
>> I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on this issue.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Sorin
>> my photography site: http://www.bostonphotographs.com
>> my milonga review site: http://www.milongareview.com
>> blog: http://sorinsblog.blogspot.com
>>
>>
>>
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>>
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