Moose Blues - Photobooth and Hike

Besides being one of the main organizers at Moose Blues this year I was also the designated photographer. This was both great and terrible at the same time. Great because I have creative control of the photographs and impressions of the weekend but terrible because organizing and running a festival is already a full time job so adding photography to that is obviously challenging.

View fullsize

Trolls like to eat goats - [28mm f8 1/100 iso400]

One thing that I think is a great part of Moose Blues is the photo booth. The first year was a celebration of Norway with Norwegian flags, national costumes. etc. Last year the theme of the event was the Vikings! The photo booth had helmets, swords, shields, and viking cloaks. The props worked really well and I have to give mad props (pun intended) to everyone who helped with all the decoration (Unn Elise, Daria, Sunniva and Dag Are). This year the theme was trolls so we built a bridge, added some goats and had some wigs so people could be a troll. (If this is in any way confusing that's fine, you should have been there but there's always next year ;) )

As we had multiple layers where the people could be in the photograph this year the lighting was a bit trickier. I started with an umbrella as key light on camera left. You can clearly see this in the reflection of Dan's glasses. This was a great but the right side was a bit dark and the background was a bit too monochromatic. Next year we should make the background a bit more colorful or have a bit more interest. The pure white wall was not really the best idea in the end. To have some fill from the right side and have a bit more color in the shot I had a bare flash 90 degrees from the camera with a blue gel. I choose blue because it had some distinct color and there was already some blue in the shot.

View fullsize

Goats under the Bridge - [32mm f8 1/100 iso400]

This was nice but the tunnel under the bridge was very dark so I added my favorite light of these pictures. I had a bare flash rim light coming from behind the set. That really made the 'water' pop and really helped separate the subjects from the background.

All in all I was quite happy with the photobooth. Of course there are improvements to be made but those will be for next year. For one I want to include a broader range of colors in the set. You can see all of the photos on my facebook. If you have feedback on the photography grab me for a beer and I'd be happy to discuss it. Or discuss beer. Or philosophy. Or Whatever.

Leave a comment below if you have inspiration or ideas for next year's photobooth!

MooseBlues.no - website Moose Blues
facebook.com/SeanBeardMoose - facebook SeanBeardMoose

Moose Blues - Videos

Moose Blues is over! And it was fantastic! I had a really great time seeing everyone enjoying themselves, learning and dancing until late at night :D

Moose Blues is very close to my heart because three years ago Francesca, Elin and I started it. When I moved to Oslo there was no blues dancing scene and I really wanted to have one. I befriended Elin and Francesca, who also loved blues so we banded together with the goal of building a fun, inclusive and sustainable blues dance scene. Over the past three years we have organized many smaller workshops and taught classes and tasters together to bring this dance to as many as we can but our crowning jewel is definitely Moose Blues.

Every year we aspire to bring you the best dancing, the best music and the best aspects of Norwegian culture we can. We're very proud of what we have accomplished and there are so many people around us who support us in bringing this festival forward. I really hope that next year we keep on going forward at the pace we have set. To use internet slang: I is hype!

Mike, Dan, Ruth, and Mike introduce themselves at Moose Blues 2016 in Oslo, Norway

Today I want to share some of the videos that I took during Moose Blues. Of course I recorded the teacher's introduction and their performances but it was also Ruth's birthday this weekend so I recorded her birthday jam too. On the troll adventure on Saturday Maren and Dag Are sang a beautiful Norwegian lullaby. These videos are bundled into a nifty playlist for your viewing pleasure :)

Providing live music this weekend was the amazing Dan Nash. This guy is incredible, he has been playing for the blues dance community for many years. I was shocked to search YouTube and found few good videos of his performances. Most are just bad phone videos, some have bad white balance and some are good but just boring. I thought this should change because this guy deserves to be heard and everyone deserves to hear him!

Dan Nash performing live at Moose Blues 2016. www.DanNashBlues.com www.MooseBlues.com www.SeanBeardMoose.com

During the event I recorded most of his performance and made another playlist of those songs. I don't have all of them edited yet so come back later because the playlist will grow a lot!

I took almost all of the videos with my 14mm Samyang lens with it's characteristic super wide angle. This gives the videos a super cool exaggerated depth. Things that are closer are dispreportionately large and farther away is dispreportionately smaller. You can especially see this when people get close to the lens (Mike and Dan's performance comes to mind specifically). I'll do a review of this lens at a later point. Leave a comment below if you think I should do a blog post review with lots of examples or if I should do a video review.

MooseBlues.no - website Moose Blues
youtube.com/... - youtube playlist Moose Blues
youtube.com/... - youtube playlist Dan Nash Live
mikethegirl.com - website Mike and Dan
ruthandmike.com - website Ruth and Mike
dannashblues.com - website Dan Nash

A look ahead and of course Moose Blues!

View fullsize

Dramatic Bow Tie - [200mm f8 1/160 iso100]

Short post today. Moose Blues is full steam ahead and can't stop now! Preparations are almost complete and we are excited!

Here a picture I took of the extreemly limited edition hand made bow ties! Unn Elise (@esilennu on instagram) is a costume maker and works at Den Norske Opera & Ballet. She works in the men's department on the coolest stuff and is quite good. I will do another blog post on her in the future to show you guys some of the stuff she does.

The lighting was actually very simple. I had just one flash with a grid about half a meter from my face pointed down at me. The bare flash makes the shadows very hard and adds a lot of drama to the photo. This lighting scheme is called loop lighting. It was taken with my 70-200 on my 6D.

Tap Shim Sham - [70mm f4 1/200 iso6400]

Last week I attended an end of season tap concert for At Tickle Toes, the tap dance school I go to. I will have many more photos up as soon as Moose is over and I have time to sort and edit them.

I like this photo because tap dancers are so dynamic and this photo shows it off very well. It is at the end of the show and they are dancing the classic tap shim sham. This is one of the most famous routines in American vernacular dances and I love it because of it's versatile structure.

Last week was also my favorite day in Norway: 17 mai or Grunnlovsdagen. This day is celebrated because it is the day that Norway got it's constitution in 1814 and it was a huge step towards eventual independence (1905 I think). This day is my favorite because it's filled with people being happy and celebrating on the streets. Everyone is in a great mood and the atmosphere is amazing. The best part though are the bunader. These traditionally inspired garments are worn by everyone who owns them and each person has a connection to the style of garment because every little town or valley has it's own bunad. The colors, the embroidery, the style, the accessories, and even the jewellery all identify the bunad as coming from a specific area.

One of the most important things you can do on the 17th is go get ice cream with friends. Here we were getting ice cream after a social dance in Frognerparken (yes they did dance in their traditional costumes). Other traditions include champagne breakfasts with friends and BBQs with friends in the evening. Watching the parades is also always fun but my favorite is still bunad watching.

View fullsize

Bunads and Ice Cream - [100mm f4 1/400 iso100]

If you would like me to go deeper into the shim sham then leave a comment below as there are a lot of different variations and a lot of fun history.

I will see you all again after Moose Blues!!!
 

MooseBlues - facebook event for Moose Blues - It contains the most up to date information.
@esilennu - instagram for Unn Elise
operaen.no/en - website Den Norske Opera & Ballet - english
tickletoes.no - website At Tickle Toes
wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Constitution_Day - wiki for Grunlovsdagen