Salsa social @ Chicago

Last week's Salsa social @ Chicago.











A self-portrait.

Last week's footwork class with Sacuye's Ibi.





Say cheese!

After the dance lesson, I caught the bus down to Fridhemsplan to do some social dancing at La Isa. There, the Wednesday night drop-in course was just wrapping up.

Zita was there, along with lots of other friendly & familiar faces.







Osiel, one of the instructors at La Isla.

I danced with this girl a couple of times. Her name is Emma, and she's a great dancer!

La Isla has gone more "disco" lately, installing blacklights on the dance floor and flourescent lighting under the bar. I'm not sure I like the changes.



I shot all of these with my 50mm lens at f/1.4, with no flash. I relied on the very unpredictable disco lights for illumination. Auto-focus was really unreliable in this environment.

I did use the flash a couple of times, with pretty good results. This is just the built-in flash on my D200, not the big external SB-800.

Finally a nice action shot!

Pierre too this photo of me.

More from La Isla!

Johan and Eva.

Sanna and some guy I don't know .:)



Lisa showing off her moves.

The 50mm lens requires some creativity on the part of the photographer in closed-quarters. I walked halfway up the stairs to the exit and shot some of these photos through the railing.

















Ibi & Marina were also there.



Pierre!

Sacuye lesson, level 4, Wednesday 11 October 2006.

I shot most of these at f/1.4 so that I could capture enough light to get a reasonably sharp image without needing to use a flash. But as a result the depth of field is quite shallow.

Ibi, one of our instructors.









Here's a quick self-portrait . The dance studio has a full-length mirror covering one wall. This makes it easy to see how silly (or smooth) one looks.

Marina, our other instructor.

And here's Sanna, a great dancer whose name I kept forgetting. Ok, now it's documented so I can't forget it! :)