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shooting my first rave
13 years ago
General
So I just posted a few pictures from Tails & Glowsticks, the furry rave event put on in Chicago last year. It was a hell of an event, as I said in the comments to the pictures I was very impressed with it. They promised a top notch laser and light show and they delivered. Look, I know I'm missing the point of these kinds of dances. I'm one of those people that stand on the edges of the dancefloor and watch the goings on, I know it's lame but my inhibitions are industrial strength. But damn if I don't enjoy a good dance anyway, even if I'm not directly participating I can still pick up on the feel of the energy of the event, even from the periphery the feel is electrifying.
The thing I want to comment on is that I was at a total loss as to how to photograph such an event. I want to share the experience for anyone else interested in such things, either how to adjust to a new subject or to raves in particular.
I seem to keep putting myself into situations where I'm trying to photograph unusual stuff. Long exposure night pictures, auroras, large tesla coils (you get to see some interesting things at sci-fi cons), just all sorts of odd stuff. There's often no conventional wisdom involving these subjects. I mean how do you figure out the white balance setting for an aurora? I still have no idea, there's no reference white level to use.
So shooting a rave was just this all over again. I'd been to a number of furcons that had large scale dances with various degrees of dance lighting, but there I'd focused mostly on poi spinners because that became my dominant light source. The rave had next to no poi spinners, besides it was probably a little too tight for someone to have room to spin things like that around.
What I did have was four spotlights with motorized pan tilt heads, a multicolor laser, and a fog machine. The fog machine proved to be the vital element with what I ended up doing. I just kind of tried various approaches, including having my flash turned on or off. Every time I tried something I looked at what the camera had captured to see if it worked.
Check out the picture with the two fursuiters walking towards the camera. Notice how that image looks a bit less dramatic than the others? I used the flash to try to illuminate the suiters, but it bounced around enough in the small space that it evenly illuminated the background. I ended up with flash exposed shots that made the room look fairly normally lit, but it ruined the feel of the scene so I stopped doing that. I still want to experiment more with making the flash intentionally underpowered so it illuminates the subjects only slightly, enough to reveal some detail and keep them from being black outlines, but still not overpower the ambient lighting. Maybe I'll get the chance next month.
What I learned of that event was that to try to capture the feel of the rave environment I had to work with the combination of low ambient lighting levels but bright spotlights and lasers. If I brightened up the room so that the dancers were more visible the effect was lost, so I exposed for the bright lighting and let the dancers appear as dark silhouettes in front of the shafts of light.
The question remains what would have happened if I could have gotten up to the DJ table and shot back towards the dancers. I just couldn't get up there, other people with cameras had already grabbed the best spots there so I took what I could get. I have no idea what kind of shots I would have gotten, but at least I wouldn't have gotten so many pictures of people's backs, since they were mostly facing the DJ table.
So anyway, that's adapted to shooting such a challenging environment. The short version is that I try a little bit of everything and try to repeat what seems to work. I was thinking about posting a question about this on a photography forum I frequent, but I just didn't think anyone else there would have ever shot a rave either. The shots I got aren't necessarily great, the angles were less than ideal and I was mostly experimenting all night. But I'm easily pleased by bright colors and strong lights, and I managed to capture that kind of feel in abundance. And now I have that experience and I can start from that level next time and maybe improve some more.
That rave set an interesting precedent. It was a curious thing, I'd been to Midwest FurFest four times already and had been thinking that what they really needed was some fog to make their lighting stand out. Then I finally got to see fog at Tails & Glowsticks, and it was even better than I thought it would have been. The laser was kinda cool before the fog was turned on, the beams are visible as a trail of speckles in the air, reflecting off dust I suppose. But then the fog was turned on and all the lights suddenly became visible and the impact of the laser was amplified. And then last year MFF added fog to their dance lighting setup. And then I went to the Furry End of the World party, and they had heavy fog for their dance setup, heavy enough that you could see it leaking out the entrance to the dance room.
I never want to go back to fogless dances again. Not only do they make the experience so much better, but they make for more dramatic pictures as well.
The thing I want to comment on is that I was at a total loss as to how to photograph such an event. I want to share the experience for anyone else interested in such things, either how to adjust to a new subject or to raves in particular.
I seem to keep putting myself into situations where I'm trying to photograph unusual stuff. Long exposure night pictures, auroras, large tesla coils (you get to see some interesting things at sci-fi cons), just all sorts of odd stuff. There's often no conventional wisdom involving these subjects. I mean how do you figure out the white balance setting for an aurora? I still have no idea, there's no reference white level to use.
So shooting a rave was just this all over again. I'd been to a number of furcons that had large scale dances with various degrees of dance lighting, but there I'd focused mostly on poi spinners because that became my dominant light source. The rave had next to no poi spinners, besides it was probably a little too tight for someone to have room to spin things like that around.
What I did have was four spotlights with motorized pan tilt heads, a multicolor laser, and a fog machine. The fog machine proved to be the vital element with what I ended up doing. I just kind of tried various approaches, including having my flash turned on or off. Every time I tried something I looked at what the camera had captured to see if it worked.
Check out the picture with the two fursuiters walking towards the camera. Notice how that image looks a bit less dramatic than the others? I used the flash to try to illuminate the suiters, but it bounced around enough in the small space that it evenly illuminated the background. I ended up with flash exposed shots that made the room look fairly normally lit, but it ruined the feel of the scene so I stopped doing that. I still want to experiment more with making the flash intentionally underpowered so it illuminates the subjects only slightly, enough to reveal some detail and keep them from being black outlines, but still not overpower the ambient lighting. Maybe I'll get the chance next month.
What I learned of that event was that to try to capture the feel of the rave environment I had to work with the combination of low ambient lighting levels but bright spotlights and lasers. If I brightened up the room so that the dancers were more visible the effect was lost, so I exposed for the bright lighting and let the dancers appear as dark silhouettes in front of the shafts of light.
The question remains what would have happened if I could have gotten up to the DJ table and shot back towards the dancers. I just couldn't get up there, other people with cameras had already grabbed the best spots there so I took what I could get. I have no idea what kind of shots I would have gotten, but at least I wouldn't have gotten so many pictures of people's backs, since they were mostly facing the DJ table.
So anyway, that's adapted to shooting such a challenging environment. The short version is that I try a little bit of everything and try to repeat what seems to work. I was thinking about posting a question about this on a photography forum I frequent, but I just didn't think anyone else there would have ever shot a rave either. The shots I got aren't necessarily great, the angles were less than ideal and I was mostly experimenting all night. But I'm easily pleased by bright colors and strong lights, and I managed to capture that kind of feel in abundance. And now I have that experience and I can start from that level next time and maybe improve some more.
That rave set an interesting precedent. It was a curious thing, I'd been to Midwest FurFest four times already and had been thinking that what they really needed was some fog to make their lighting stand out. Then I finally got to see fog at Tails & Glowsticks, and it was even better than I thought it would have been. The laser was kinda cool before the fog was turned on, the beams are visible as a trail of speckles in the air, reflecting off dust I suppose. But then the fog was turned on and all the lights suddenly became visible and the impact of the laser was amplified. And then last year MFF added fog to their dance lighting setup. And then I went to the Furry End of the World party, and they had heavy fog for their dance setup, heavy enough that you could see it leaking out the entrance to the dance room.
I never want to go back to fogless dances again. Not only do they make the experience so much better, but they make for more dramatic pictures as well.
