You might have guessed that I can get pretty serious about photography, creating or capturing that perfect shot. I know that it’s not often possible. But I have a minimum standard in my head of what I want to create. I shot nearly 700 photos during the hour-and-a-half show, and none of them perfectly satisfied me.

It has nothing to do with the technical image quality, which looked great. Rather, I didn’t get the framing and expression that I wanted. Most of the time, something in the way detracted. I get that most people would be perfectly satisfied with the images I produced.

Take the image above, which has wonderful color and a dramatic dancing pose. I like it a lot, and it’s one of my better ones. Unfortunately, there is a dancer to the left who negatively affects the framing. During many of the numbers, dancers would come down the aisles. It’s dramatic and great for the audience, and even for video, but tough for still photography. I’m guessing that at the larger stage, the shooting would’ve been a lot easier. But because of the rain, we were stuck in the smaller inside venue.

Here’s a slightly wider shot that looks okay. Unfortunately, there was a very rotund person who you can see in the bottom right. He was in a lot of my shots, and being so wide, it was hard to shoot around him. I sometimes shot upwards, as in the first photo, but most of the action happened at stage level. I don’t mind audience members’ silhouettes; ideally, not ones that take up the space of two or three people.

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