In the heart of Times Square, a few blocks south of yesterday’s photo, there’s a plaza that attracts street performers and a healthy crowd of onlookers. There I discovered two dance troupes. They weren’t directly competing with each other but shared the space, alternating between sets.

Both groups appeared to be predominantly Asian, performing what looked like K-pop-inspired dance routines. They executed complex sets of choreographed moves while members of their teams filmed the performances. I was also interested in capturing the dancers, but the photography proved much trickier than it looked. Much of that was due to my manual-focus Leica M with a fixed 50mm lens—a setup not particularly well suited to fast action at a distance.

I had to get closer than I wanted to frame the dancers properly, and rangefinder focusing on fast-moving subjects was asking for trouble. I closed the aperture more than I normally would to increase the depth of field. After those adjustments and many attempts, I finally captured an expression I really liked. Yesterday, I lucked out and caught the perfect expressions within a couple of shots. This time, I had to work considerably harder. It was worth it. I especially love the woman on the left, striking that confident pose with attitude.

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