Swingin' Spring Videos

This past weekend the lovely team from Swingin’ Spring in Göteborg, Sweden invited me over as videographer. In this post I'd like to show you a few videos that I really enjoyed making :)

The above photo was taken from the balcony of my host and friend Mio. She was wonderful in putting up with my late night/morning editing sessions and caring for me in general. The photo is of the most characteristic part of the city skyline, Liseberg and Gothia Towers. It was quickly shot just before heading out to the party and the light was just gorgeous!

Friday evening performance at Swingin' Swing by the Pernilla, Maria, and Tove. http://SwinginSpring.se/ brought to you by http://www.SeanBeardMoose.com/

The event itself was great craic altogether. The organizers are passionate about the quality they deliver and the dance we all love which is clearly noticeable throughout the whole event. I got to meet and work with a lot of old friends and make some new ones on the way. The sound guys (who were also in charge of the light) were very nice and open to my input which was very cool :)

The first video I want to show you (above) is of the second performance on the Friday evening. The light is very centered on their lower halves and it kind of worked for this show since there were only 3 dancers and they didn't move around much. You can clearly see dark areas in the other videos. I used a standard zoom for the videos to get a nice field of view and not too much distortion.

Shim Sham to 't ain't what you do' performed by Gentlemen and Gangsters at Swingin' Spring. http://www.SwinginSpring.se brought to you by: http://www.SeanBeardMoose.com http://gentlemenandgangsters.com/

After Friday we adjusted the lights to cover the dance area better. For the jams I also switched to an ultrawide angle lens that lets me get a lot closer to the action and be a little bit more artistic to pull the viewer into the scene. I particularly liked the way that the shim sham video turned out with the interaction from the participants :) Great energy!

Let me know if you liked my lens choice or would have made other choices in the comments below.

swinginspring.se - website Swingin' Spring
youtube.com/... - youtube playlist for Swingin' Spring

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

Mooses, Trolls, and Swingin' Valborg!

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Velkomen til Noreg - [100mm f8 1/80 iso400]

I am organizing a blues dance festival called Moose Blues at the end of May and this year our theme is Trolls. I want to share two related pictures I captured in Stavanger on the west coast of Norway.

I was walking around the city taking photos and being very touristy in general but there was one thing in particular that I wanted to do. I had been there once previously and in the center of town there is one street where all the buildings are painted in all sorts of vibrant, brilliant colors. All the houses in the old center of Stavanger are painted all white and I heard somewhere that 40% of all houses in Norway are painted white so this is definitely something :)

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Can't wait for Moose Blues - [200mm f4 1/125 iso400]

Apparently this explosion of something completely different was a combination of a local hairdresser and an artist in 2005. The street is called Øvre Holmegate or more appropriately: #fargegate. Farge means color, gate means street and yes the hashtag makes it cooler :P

On the street I found two statues of trolls outside a shop, I don't even remember which shop. As I recall it was an overcast day but not too dark and it had an amazingly soft light coming from everywhere overhead (obviously overhead but still great light). All the colors in the street just popped out and screamed at me. It. Was. Great!

I shot with my Canon 6D and Canon 70-200 f4L IS USM lens hand held. It's an absolutely lovely lens and I really like these two pictures for the color that it let me capture. The camera body isn't too shabby either but in this situation most modern bodies would have done smashingly.

Furthermore I have just come back from Örebro, Sweden where I attended a lindy hop party. Swingin' Valborg was great but more on that in my next blog post where I will feature some of the photos I took. For now you can enjoy this small atmosphere clip I took of the dance floor and the Rhythm Baby Makers.

Let me know in the comments below If you want to know more about the gear I shoot with or how I shoot certain pictures. You can request the story behind any picture on this site or on my Facebook page.

MooseBlues.no - Moose Blues website
facebook.com/events/1920140741545361/ - Moose Blues facebook event
regionstavanger.com/en/Product/?TLp=308579 - website about #fargegate
facebook.com/events/166328450393439/ - Swingin' Valborg facebook event
therhythmbabymakers.com/home/ - Rhythm Baby Makers website
facebook.com/Seanbeardmoose/ - my facebook page

ALF 2016 - part 1 - videos

“If you don’t like the weather in Trondheim, wait ten minutes”

This past weekend I was at ALF in Trondheim, or T-town as I like to call it. ALF (Another Lindy hop Festival) is a medium sized lindy hop workshop weekend in the middle of Norway. T-town is known for its weather. All of it. At the same time. I'm not kidding. I am proudly told by locals that the saying to go by is: "If you don't like the weather in Trondheim, wait ten minutes."

ALF 2016 - Jack & Jill Final Spotlights

I have been to T-town before and have been quite lucky with the weather. This time the stereotype held true. We had cloudy weather, clear weather, sunshine, rain, hail, wind, and calm. That was just the first day. In the end the weather didn't put a damper on our spirits because the festival was great.

The T-town dancers are a friendly lot who are dedicated to creating an easygoing atmosphere and bringing a high level of quality to the event. ALF included a band at each of the Friday and Saturday evening parties, some great DJs, a Jack & Jill competition, and performances from their show group as well as the teachers. Yes I was one of the DJs and I'm not afraid to say that I love the music that I play for dancers. :P

ALF 2016 - Trondheim Show Group Performance

The local show group performed to 'Twenty Four Robbers' and I really liked the concept of the choreography. It featured Nicolay trying to get some rest (probably much needed as he was one of the main organizers for ALF) and being distracted by twenty four robbers. No I did not count them but there were enough of them that I'm going to believe it was twenty four :P

The teachers this weekend were Audun & Charlotte from Norway, Gosia & Kuno from Copenhagen, and Ron & Sharon from Israel. I felt the choice of teachers worked well for this event as they really cared and tried to connect to the event and the participants. This sounds like it should be a given but unfortunately this is not always the case. When it does happen though I really think everyone appreciates it and the event is much better. It always helps when they can show off some amazing dancing in their performance!

ALF 2016 - Teachers Performance

As the title implies this is only part one of my ALF coverage. I also took photos and will post them soon. In the meantime you can watch all 6 of the videos I took on my YouTube channel, check the ALF site, and check out the teacher's websites. Leave a comment below if you also want me to write about my DJing experience at ALF with song choice, playlist, thoughts I had during the evening and some info on the other DJs.

Posted by Sean Mac an Bhaird.

My ALF playlist - YouTube link to all my videos from ALF
http://www.anotherlindyhopfestival.com/ - website for ALF
http://audunkve.wix.com/audunandcharlotte - website for Audun and Charlotte
http://happyfeetstudio.dk/ - website for Gosia and Kuno
http://www.holylindyland.com/ - website for Ron and Sharon