Yeli at Star Rise, © 2011, Matt Vanecek

Wow, so it’s been a while since I posted a blog update! Much too long. Life has been a bit short on photography and a lot long on work for the last few months. And the work part is not showing signs of getting any shorter any time soon. So I’ve been struggling to find time to make photographs. I have a video project to finish (hopefully this weekend), and another to start and finish. My day job has been keeping my time monopolized to the exclusion of almost everything else. My poor wife has been taking care of household task all on her own, including the classic man’s task of taking out the garbage. The balance between work and life has found the scales tipped entirely in the wrong direction. Aside from contributing to my ongoing ability to pay my mortgage, this unbalance is also encouraging me to find a workflow that allows me to process pictures faster. I am working on finding a way to keep photography in my life, and even expand it. I love making pictures, and I love when I can make portraits that make people feel good about themselves.

I’ve had a couple photo sessions that I’ll blog about later (the clients get first peek, of course!), and when I found out my wife was going to dance in a bellydance hafla, I was like, “Score!” and charged up my camera and flash batteries. Yay! A chance to take pictures! Bellydancers are great to take pictures of because they have great expressiveness. Bellydance is an interactive art form–the dancers perform and give energy to the audience, and the audience whoops and hollers and claps and gives positive energy back to the dancers. It’s not like ballet or jazz dance or other modern dance forms where the audience sits and watches and claps politely at the conclusion. Bellydance can be elegant, or it can be down-home, but either way, the audience should clap to the music and vocalize their appreciation throughout a performance. Aiwa, habibi! Our friend Cathy is a wonderful local Bellydance instructor, and she puts on a hafla (dance party, so to speak) called Star Rise every June. The show takes place at Denton Civic Centre–making most excellent use of facilities we all pay for to present a folkloric dance style a little different from the United States norm. There were also some Tribal Fusion dancers–Tribal Fusion being a cousin to Bellydance, but incorporates a tribal motif and a fusion of different dance styles. Shimmies and pop-locks abound!

The dancer in the picture above is Yeli. Yeli is a very popular dancer in the area, and she also cooks up some mean chocolate treats! Some other dancers were my lovely wife and her troupe (Just Fabulous), Farasha (a Tribal dance instructor) and her class/troupe, and of course Cathy Barton’s class. It was a rousing show with some beautiful, fun dances. Click on the picture above and browse through some moments in time at this hafla!

Until next time, drink, dance, and make merry!

© 2010, Matt Vanecek

I am the de facto photographer for my wife’s belly dance troupe, Just Fabulous Belly Dance. This year, the troupe performed at the Texas State Fair in front of the Hall of State. Because they performed on October 10th, they also performed on the Heritage Festival stage, celebrating cultural diversity. There was a cultural diversity fair on October 10th, and all the troupes had to participate.

I love watching them dance, and belly dance in general. If you ever have a chance to watch a belly dance performance, whether at a staged show, or at a Middle Eastern restaurant, or even at Scarborough Fair, it’s certainly worth the time, in my opinion!

I meant to use a fill flash on this shoot, as the sun was pretty much behind them. However, I was so discombobulated when I got there that I completely forgot! I left my wallet in the car, and had to take the tram back to the parking lot before I even got into the fair gates! So I was pretty rushed trying to get back to the Hall of State to start shooting, and using the flash completely left my mind. Lesson learned for next time, I guess. Thankfully, shooting in RAW allows me to go in and adjust the images appropriately, to lighten the shadows on faces and costumes. But it’s pretty time consuming. I would have saved a bunch of time if I’d just used my fill flash! *kicking myself*

Enjoy the images!