Putting dance into a still photo almost sounds sinful. Dance is the art of moving one's body, and that of others to create visually pleasing sights though motion. So it definitely sounds nuts to capture the soul of dance in a single frame.

This capture is one of the better ones from the night. Beautiful motion frozen with just a tinge of motion in the dresses, hands and feet. Then I caught some excellent emotion in the dancers faces conveying joy in the act of dancing. It was that emotion that really set this photo apart from a similar one take a few seconds later.

To achieve this I had to be careful with the shutter speed and experiment...the variable of course is also that the speed of dancer motion which of course varies greatly in any one routine. Since this shoot occurred only with available light, and no flash, the experimentation was critical to know my gear's capability and the type of scene I could reasonably expect to capture with some quality.

So experiment...be thoughtful and look for the emotion in the motion to sculpt a wonderful photo.

-ehw