Ice Show - Day and Life/One Dance Routine

Over last weekend I went to a an ice show that my niece was in. She had two appearances. I know that I am bias but she did very good. She was so graceful on ice and you would never guess any of it was hard at all. We have been working on her to have her smile, smile, smile and most of the time she was smiling. So wonderful ice show all around.

I later found out not only is my niece getting private lessons but she is also pushing to where she can do a solo and no doubt take on a class at some part. This is exciting as it is something she really loves to do. Now don’t go thinking Olympics or anything. I somehow do not see her getting up at 5:30 in the morning and skating than coming back after school and skating some more until she needs to go home and do homework. I just have never seen her quit that dedicated to anything but you never know. Then again she does love her sleep.

Anyway I attended the Saturday afternoon and evening shows. I took around 2,500 pictures between both show. I picked the evening show and started going through the 1,200 or so pictures trying to come up with a handful of great pictures. It should not be that hard. I do not know if you have ever cooked a sauce but if you take and boil out some moister and actually reduce it what you end up with is something that tastes incredible. Well when you start with 1,200 pictures and reduce it down to 20 or 30 pictures...

Anyway of the 1,200 pictures, I only had less than 1 percent that did not turn out (real bad blur, bad crop, people walk in front of me, etc.). I had still more that were fairly soft focus or just plain boring. It is all of those I am weeding out now. But I thought I would post something. This is a series of photos of one persons act. What I like about it is I captured her doing several different moves. I thought it made a nice series. All the rest of the pictures I am focusing more on one or two exceptional photo.

Before we get started let me say that I did sharpen I think it was three of these images. Other than that all I did was reduce the size of the picture so I could post them. One last thing, no this is not my niece. So lets get started then...

Besides the lack of light, the movement, and the way they used the spot lights (lighting their feet and torso only) it was not the easiest to get these pictures. Don't let anyone ever tell you different, a good lens is everything.

I kind of hated to include this picture. I mean I know she has a body suit on but somehow it just felt like not the best picture. Still it did show her spinning and clearly showed her legs and the nifty fog in the background so I kept it in.

They did not use fog on ever act but apparently on this one they used it a fair amount. The funny thing is the fog with the cold temperature. It tended to not move very much and just hang low and not move a lot. It took some time to disperse.


I usually like a front view of the skaters but I really love how the fog is showing up in this picture. I get the feeling at any moment she is going to disappear into the fog. I wonder if she came from the town of Brigadoon? (sorry, I love musicals)


And of course the final pose. Nicely done. There you have it, the first few pictures. I hope to get things boiled down to 20 or 30 more pictures for tomorrow.