End of Summer Belly Dance Showcase

 

Changing World and the Ultimate DSLR Fashion Camera

It's a changing world, especially in technology. Change in notionally good, but I'm not always pleased by how things change. This has definitely been the case with digital cameras, which within the last 18 months or so have seen a momentous marketplace shift toward mirrorless cameras, across multiple manufacturers. They have been impacted by the rising utility of the camera on a smartphone, and are clearly looking to provide differentiated value.

Because of these camera market changes, I'd also kind of gotten word that certain lines of Canon DSLR cameras (my camera system) were likely to fade into oblivion. It really appeared in the New Year of 2019 that a camera I had really wanted for a long time was going to be obsoleted, the Canon EOS 5DSr, a 50.6 megapixel super camera. So, mid-2019 I was able to obtain one of those beautiful instruments, before they fade away from the dealers shelves.

Recently, Tabitha joined me for a belly dance foot shoot at a nearby Egyptian setting. This was also a great outing for the new 5DSr camera. Here's one of the shots from our artistic collaboration:

Tabitha

I consider the Canon EOS 5DSr to be the ultimate (DSLR...) fashion camera. In testing, I found I could take a full-body foto of a lovely model then zoom into just one of her eyes on a 1080p monitor driven by the camera -- retaining a tack-sharp image. Improved mage resolution changes what is possible -- the options for cropping with this camera are incredible.

Bay Area Belly 2019!

Looking forward to the 9th annual Bay Area Belly again!

Nadia Saba

When I was in Zürich last Summer, I had the wonderful opportunity to work with professional belly dancer Nadia Saba. We planned a shoot at Irchelpark, which is a spacious place with numerous interesting natural backgrounds. This shot was taken near sundown, as our day was ending, offering backlight against the lovely dancer.

Last Summer in Zürich

Last Summer, I had a series of fantastic foto shoots in Zürich, Switzerland, hosted by ZeoT. As well, there were some awesome location shoots. I met many lovely belly dancers, and we created beautiful images came together. I will post work from that trip soon.

Here is the banner announcing my visit:

Mychelle Crown

Last weekend I had the chance for another artistic collaboration with a dear friend, professional dancer Mychelle Crown, who hails from Sacramento, California. Mychelle is a pillar in the belly dance community, and an award winning artist. Among other awards, she was Belly Dancer of the Year 2014.

The collaboration was fabulous! Aside from Mychelle's gorgeous costumes, we had a bunch of nice belly dance props such as as dumbek, candelabra, scimitars, candles, and more. Here's one sample of our recent work together:

And Now 2019

So much happened in 2018. The main belly dance highlights were Belly Dancer of the Year 2018, my belly dance foto shoot trip to Zürich in the Summer, and a pair of remote studio shoots in New England. Then there was some professional belly dancer shoots scattered throughout the year, Sandra's student nights, and a benefit show. For alternative art, there were also various projects with lovely Muses, and some new work in fashion, including one publication credit!

There were some major changes in 2018. I closed my foto hosting site at zenfolio in Spring 2018, and moved it to Smugmug, which was an immediate improvement. After a lot of soul searching, I decided to quit participation in Facebook in Winter 2018. This was due to numerous data privacy failures and ethical concerns. After not being on Facebook a awhile, I could really begin to sense the behavioral modification they engage in. I feel much better not being exposed to that, and also feel like I have more control over time in my day. I moved my belly dance social media to a new site called Ello, the Creators Network.

I am now fully Apple- and Adobe-free in my creative workflow. In recent years, I became more and more unhappy with how Apple engages in gratuitous unnecessary change with their hardware and software. But the last straw was this Fall, when an iPad Pro constantly fought against my off-loading my camera raw fotos from Zürich. I was already investigating various creative edit tools which would not require renting software from Adobe, whose rental policies I disagree with. They also appear very behind on innovation, having become mainly a licensing regime. But the experience with Apple's condescending attitude toward users for Apps and data access caused me to switch platforms away from both macOS and iOS. In the end, I literally had to use Linux to get my foto data out of the iPad. Linux is central in all of my creative work now.

My main workflow has a two key elements: (1) a digital darkroom with "digital negative" and archival storage; and (2) and a creative editing light table with secondary "digital negative" processing. I use Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS and Darktable for managing fotos and storing them for access on very large remote USB drives (with backup redundancy). And my light table is a Google Pixelbook. This machine is both a tablet computer and a laptop. It runs ChromeOS and a Debian Linux container, as well as Android -- three systems simultaneously.

After making foto selections in the darkroom, foto data is copied to my Pixelbook. To edit and import camera raws I'll use a very strong open source Linux App called Raw Therapee, using the Linux container under ChromeOS. My main creative editing tools are first a multiplatform App called Polarr, and also Google's  Snapseed. I also have some specialized glamour editing tools. All of these work exceptionally well under ChromeOS. Editing fotos with a ChromeOS tablet, including using a Google Pixelbook Pen, is much more like retouching film to me. A wondrous experience! Excited about 2019!