Last Wednesday, I had the opportunity to join my photography class on an on-location photo shoot at the Rebel Dancers studio in Nicosia. There were 4-5 different classes going on at the same time, ranging from Belly Dancing to Break Dancing, mostly attended to by teenagers and the occasional adult. The owner there was nice enough to allow twenty or so photographers lagging all their cameras, tripods and flashes to enter any of the classrooms and shoot at free will.

I must say that getting a decent shot was by no means an easy exercise. Freezing motion in a precise and eloquent way, is truly a tough skill to master and requires a bit of luck to be on your side as well. You are in a studio indoors with harsh, unflattering and inadequate lighting, constantly fighting motion blur, taking shot after shot, praying that at least 1 of those shots comes out tack sharp. I brought with me my Canon 24-70mm F2.8L lens, a fairly fast lens one might say, but even at F2.8 and an ISO bumped all the way to 3200, I could barely get 1/100 – 1/250 sec shutter speeds.

I must have taken close to 500 shots, and this was one of only two or three shots that according to my criteria came out half decent. By no means a stellar shot, but given the amount of effort that went behind this exercise, I believe it earned a place on my blog page!

Taken with my Canon 60D camera, at F2.8, 1/250 speed at ISO 3200.