Fire Dancers

Last night, a friend and I went into town to do a bit of nighttime street photography. Unbeknownst to both of us, a local fire dancing group regularly meets there and does an evening performance. Rather than wander around town looking for things to photograph, we decided to spend most of our time watching the performance.

I was lucky to have matched the right camera gear to the moment... almost. Earlier, I had planned on loading my Nikon F with a roll of Kentmere Pan 400 and pushing it at EI 1600. But later that day, I cooled off on the idea of shooting black and white film. Instead, I opted for my Canon EOS R8. I couldn’t remember the last time I had done any color nighttime street photography, and I thought that night would be a good opportunity to do so. Thinking I was going to shoot more stationary subject matter, I went for my old 85mm f/1.8 non-AI Nikkor, which I planned to shoot at more wide-open apertures than not.

That choice of lens ultimately proved not to be the best, although I couldn’t have known it when I made my decision. My biggest challenge was keeping everyone in focus. With a 1960s-era manual-focus lens attached to my camera, those performers who were constantly moving back and forth were nearly impossible to photograph sharply. I had a far easier time with those who stood in one spot.