The Past Reveals the Present - Competitive Dancing

I was originally going to carry on with bringing a contemporary picture story from related history surrounding the famous people that have emerged from Rugby school since its origins however after considering the fact that distance and time would be against me I decided to change my subject.

It is now my intention to tell a picture story of a contemporary competitive freestyle dancing competition and show how this style of dancing has originated from past dance forms.

As I was unsure, due to all the hearsay in regards to my rights to being freely able to photograph children in a public place and knowing that photography is not usually permitted at competitions, unless just photographing the award ceremony, I decided to email David Pollard, owner of Dance Force Studio's in Lower Darwen, to see if there would be any problems with me turning up at a competition with all of my photography gear and taking pictures of the children dancing.

"Hi David,

As you may be aware I am studying Photographic Media at University and my new brief is 'Photojournalism'. My lecturer agrees that it would be an excellent idea to document a Dance Competition that my daughter participates in therefore was thinking of documenting this Sunday's British Competition held at Winter Gardens, Blackpool.

My only worry is of course that events such as these do not allow people just to randomly start taking pictures therefore I was wondering if you wouldn't mind forwarding me on the organisers details from the ADFP , not sure if it is Anna Jones? . . so I can discuss with her if it is ok for me to freely take photographs at this event if she makes all the competitors and parents know of my reasons?

Thanks for your help

Joanne"

David's reply "hi joanne , just speak to anna on sunday and make her aware of the situation , i'm sure she won't have a problem with it"

To further settle my mind I decided to search the web in regards to laws about photographing children http://www.urban75.org/photos/photographers-rights-street-shooting.html

Photographing children

There are no laws against taking photos of children, but someone taking an unhealthy interest can rightly expect to attract unwelcome attention from the authorities (and quite probably passers by) pretty sharpish.

Be also mindful that if you're taking pictures in areas where dodgy folks, drug dealers and ne'er do wells may be in view, they're unlikely to be pleased with the attention and probably won't be bothered about the niceties of the law in their response.

If someone asks you to stop take pictures of them, it's generally a good idea to do so.

Update: According to this blog, Home Office Minister Tony McNulty MP has commented on the current legal situation regarding privacy.

"There is no legal restriction on photography in public places, and there is no presumption of privacy for individuals in a public place.

It is for the Chief Constable to ensure that Officers and Police Community Support Officers are acting appropriately with regards to photography in public places, and any queries regarding this should be addressed to the Chief Constable.

However decisions may be made locally to restrict photography, for example to protect children. Any questions on such local decisions should also be addressed to the force concerned."

So after my discussion with Anna Jones, the event organiser in the morning of the competition, she gladly announced my presence to the room full of parents and stated if anyone did not approve of me taking photographs of their children to approach the stage and let her know . . . luckily that did not happen!

Below are my digital contact sheets from my shoot at the Winter Gardens, documenting the British Freestyle Championships on 10th October 2010. I photographed the event with my Canon 50D using a 50mm lens however changed my lens to a 200mm telephoto to achieve my action shots.

Below are a selection of my edited images

I also photographed the event using my Yashica 35mm film camera as wanted to capture some atmospheric black and white photographs, knowing that throughout the 20th Century this was the main form of medium used to capture photo-journalistic news worthy stories. Using a 35mm film camera would also cross over the idea of the past revealing the present through documenting a contemporary subject matter but using past practises and methods.

Unfortunately however my efforts in the darkroom loading my film onto the reel let me down therefore my negatives were not up to scratch , that being ironically said as due to all the scratches and marks they possessed the printed images would not have been as striking and of a similar successful standard of quality as my images captured using my digital camera.

These are a few of my scanned negatives which I attempted to salvage via editing them within Lightroom.

Due to my daughter being a competitive dancer, therefore knowing David Pollard, the owner of Dance Force Studio's in Lower Darwen, I plan to organize a interview with him so he can give me an insight into dancing's history and its relationship it has to contemporary competitive dance forms to aid me in my research.

As well as incorporating shots I have already taken at the organised competitive dancing event I wish to also broaden my photo story including relationships that the children have within their dance school and outside their dancing world, in other words to show children just being children and to also include and show the importance of parent contribution. I wish to find out the reasoning's as to why parents, mothers especially it seems, wish their daughters or sons to take up dancing. To do this, as well as interviewing the owner of Dance Force Studio's, ask the mothers who patiently wait on many evenings at the dancing school for their children to finish their lessons.

Before I take my photography equipment to the dance studio I feel that a little inspiration is in order therefore below are some images I have found inspiring sourced from the Magnum website of dancing imagery by various different photographic artists.