A special shout out to the volunteers…
By jjtiziou | May 5, 2008
I just wanted to say an extra big ‘Thank you!’ to the many people who have been volunteering their time to help this project.
It’s been quite an adventure for me, going from more of an event documenter role to being an event producer. Having a reliable and friendly team supporting everything was really key to pulling off these two photo sessions smoothly.
I’m not the only one who appreciated it - here’s what some of the dancers had to say:
The entire operation was terrific. Your volunteers made us feel really comfortable and took great care of us.
and
I just wanted to thank you again i had a great experience…the shoot was run very efficiently..
As this project continues to evolve, we’re going to keep needing a lot of help from the community, which is why it’s exciting to hear things like this from the dancers:
“This was a wonderful experience for us both and an actual “art happening” for us.”
“Ps we both would like to volunteer for any future shoots as workers” … ”I envied you and your helpers experience.”
If you haven’t already signed up as a volunteer, you can do it on the sign up form. If you don’t want to dance, you can skip most of the form, and just check the “volunteer” box at the bottom… This project is going to move forward even if we don’t get the SEPTA commission, and we’re going to need your help!
As we finalize our proposal details, I’d especially like to thank Mark Monteith and his friend Jay for their support in the architectural and structural engineering departments, as well as all of my friends who will be helping read over our proposal and budget before we turn them in.
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Photos from second photo session!
By jjtiziou | May 5, 2008
Below are some images from our second photo session last week- sorry to take so long to get them posted, but I had to run up to New Haven to teach some workshops, and James and I have been mostly focusing on preparing the rest of our final proposal details…
The photography part of this thing is pretty easy- it’s the budgeting, structural engineering and other details that are complicated… everything’s due on thursday and we present next tuesday, so keep your fingers crossed for us!
Many thanks again to all of the wonderful people who came out to share their dancing with us!
Furthermore, many thanks to our crew of volunteers who helped run the day:
Allison Heishman, Ellen Reynolds, Krista Billings, David Konyk, Chantal Fletcher, Page Widick, Ana B. Hernández, Meg Foley, Elrey Belmonti, Robert Helms, Aseel Rashid, Stephanie 99, Alana Mettle and Greg Finnson.
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preview from second photo session
By jjtiziou | April 29, 2008
Below’s another animated preview from the second photo session. It’ll give you a quick sense of the wonderful variety of beautiful dancers that participated in our second photo session.
Edited images will be coming soon!
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second preliminary session: done!
By jjtiziou | April 27, 2008
The second photo session went *great*
Many thanks to the amazing volunteers who ran it, and wonderful dancers who came to move for us. It was an intense day, especially the latter half, and I’m pretty freaking sore from chasing after you all.
I’ll have photos online soon - and then we have to move along with the rest of the logistical sides of the project- there’s a lot to be done that isn’t photography in order to make this move forward- and we’ll keep needing your help - so stay tuned!
-jj
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photo session tomorrow at CEC (3500 Lancaster Ave)
By jjtiziou | April 26, 2008
Sunday’s photo shoot will be at the CEC - 3500 Lancaster Avenue. Click here for a map and directions.
*UPDATE* - we’ve already got a pretty packed schedule for tomorrow, so I wouldn’t recommend coming as a walk up unless you’re very patient, and don’t mind sitting around and maybe not being photographed. We’ve got nearly 45 dancers coming through already, and we *have* to be done by 5, as someone else is using the space after us. It’s going to be pretty wild!
Dancers that have already been scheduled- please remember to show up at least 20 mins before your timeslot to get signed in and warmed up.
Thanks to everyone who came to the impromptu exhibit last night!
-jj
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Photo Exhibit friday night! (april *25*)
By jjtiziou | April 24, 2008
Super short notice:
Please stop by Studio 34 friday night (April 25!)
for an exhibit of prints from last week’s shoot!
4522 Baltimore Ave, 7-10pm
The show will also feature works by Mariel Waloff.
(the email that just went out to the HPM mailing list said “April 24th, but in fact we meant friday the 25th.. sorry about that!)
Speaking of Studio 34 - for those of you who haven’t seen this fantastic new space yet, you should know that it’s available to dancers as a rehearsal space for $10/hr. Also, Margaret Foley, who was both one of our dancers and volunteers, is staging her show SLIP there May 8-18.
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Photos from first preliminary shoot!
By jjtiziou | April 24, 2008
I’ve finally gotten a chance to make sense of the photos from last friday.
There’s a nice lot of them, and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out.
Below are a few samples… I hope you will like them too!
I was a bit nervous going into this, because after coordinating all of the logistics of scheduling dancers and volunteers, it would have been most unfortunate to pull it all together and end up with mediocre photos.
This kind of fast, assembly-line style of shooting would be *much* easier if I was doing it all with only studio strobe lighting and doing the “frozen mid-air on white background” look… but I tend to find that a bit static, and really prefer to work with the motion of the dancers, and use slower shutter speeds to create images that are part sharp and part blurred to show the movement…
The problem is that that way of shooting creates a lot more room for completely messing up and ending up with just a blurry mess, especially when you’re not familiar with the dancers movements, aren’t adjusting the lighting for their costumes, and only have 8 minutes or so with each dancer… but as I said, I think it worked out quite nicely…
Thank you again to Studio 34 for hosting our first photo session- and of course to all the dancers for participating!
Also a huge thanks to the excellent volunteer crew who helped keep everything smooth:
Jennifer Dillon, Scott Pryor, Aseel Rashid, Margaret Foley, Joe Barber, Stephanie 99, Terreyl Kirton, Melody Tash, Nora Berger-Green, Heidi Fuhr, Nyssa Taylor, Greg Finson, Jeb Lewis, Martin Brown, Ana Hernández, Emma Ferguson, James Peniston and Tamanya Garza
it was such a relief having them there so that I could focus on taking the pictures!
-jj
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A quick preview
By jjtiziou | April 22, 2008
I was up till 3am shuffling data around, but haven’t quite finished sorting through the photos from the first session.
In the meanwhile, below is a quick animated recap of the entire batch of images that will give you a quick preview of what we got..The first 40 seconds are so are actually from the night before, when my Adriana, Adams, Emily and Yuval were kind enough to come help set up.
and, here’s a timelapse of what the shoot looked like from the outside- it’s a bit compressed unfortunately- the original video’s actually quite fun.
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one down, one to go
By jjtiziou | April 21, 2008
Our first photo session went great!
Many thanks to the wonderful dancers who participated, the great volunteers who ran it all without a hitch, and the folks at Studio 34 who hosted us in their gorgeous new space.
Our second photo session is scheduled for next sunday the 27th at the CEC.
Also, rumor has it that I’m throwing together a little exhibit at Studio 34 this friday (the 25th) - there just might be some fresh prints of some of last week’s images in the mix!
I’m swamped with a backlog of postproduction and correspondence, so please excuse delays, but I’ll get a proper update with photos and video of how it went up shortly..
-jj
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Here we go!
By admin | April 18, 2008
Our first photo session is tonight at Studio 34!
It’s going to be quite an adventure. If everything runs super smoothly, we’ve got ten open slots for un scheduled walk-ins, so if you’d like to come show us how you move, you’re welcome to.
(If you’re coming a a walk-in, please just be aware of the fact that there may be some wait time. This is a first test run, and if we have glitches, we’ll cut some of the walk-in slots in order to keep the schedule going on time. Walk-ins will be photographed on a first-come first-served basis, as available.)
James and I were in the space pretty late last night getting everything ready. We had some fantastic help from Adriana and Adams who proved to be experts with rolling marley, and then Emily and Yuval came in to be test subjects and showed off some great high energy dancing. Thanks guys!
Now we’re off for some more last minute preparations..
-jj
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