Raas Garba is an Indian dance they have at the Austin Diwali celebration. In addition to the fireworks and sparklers, I love shooting this activity for the technical challenge and documenting happy people. For 2024, I was attempting something I wanted to do for years, but I lacked the camera technology to do so—freezing the action.

The dancing area is not well-lit, and stopping fast-moving dancing is next to impossible. In the past, I resorted to purposely using motion blur, for creative reasons and because I couldn’t possibly stop the movement. Years ago, I had a Canon 6D full-frame DSLR with a 50mm f1.4, but that didn’t effectively work either.

In 2024, I had my Sony A7C II with fast AI autofocusing and a high-quality 50mm f1.4 GM lens with in-body image stabilization. I had the technical chops to do what I wanted in theory. A couple of things conspired to make it even more difficult. First, the lighting level was even lower than in the past. Second, they had ever-changing LED lights that, while making it fun for the dancers, made it extra tricky for high-quality photography. People often don’t look flattering in blue, green, or red lights. I either resorted to waiting for good color in the LED color-changing cycle or attempted more elaborate white balance corrections

Shooting with a 1/320 and 1/400 shutter speed, I could freeze the action, but that introduced another challenge I talked about in the dancing post for the Dia de los Muertos parade. When a person is perfectly frozen, it’s harder to convey motion—using motion blur does have advantages. Like the parade, I tried to catch people with exaggerated positions or emotions.

I achieved a technical victory in my quest for sharp dancers frozen in action. However, I wasn’t wholly successful on the creative photography front. I don’t find any of the images genuinely compelling. I dislike the lighting—something I can do nothing about. However, elaborate post-processing and extensive picture brightening have somewhat overcome this issue. I’ll have to figure out what I will do next year.

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