It has taken some time, but I've convinced a number of schools and administrators that I'm not a miracle worker and can only capture good photos and videos if the lighting is something I can work with. This means they've actually replaced some cheap LED bulbs (with crazy flicker and awful color cast!) with better ones, have me come and do a lighting check before events, give me dedicated shooting lanes, etc.
This has been an ongoing battle for several years. About 3 years back, I showed up for a showcase performance and it was essentially dark. Some wag had gotten ahold of a couple of those LED "effects lights" that were worse than useless. They refused to just leave the house lights on - this is a large ballroom dance studio, not anything with a real stage. I almost just turned around and walked out - never mind the cameras, the damn audience couldn't see anything either. I stayed because I wasn't going to make a scene and let my troupe sisters down in the two troupes I was in. My instructor and I also had a duette performance. The whole thing was craptacular - I did have words with our dance club president about it. Everyone's practiced and worked hard on their routines, at least have enough light so the performers can fucking be seen.
I personally bought the club a set of "okay" lights. They weren't perfect by any means, but at least the dancers could be seen, even though some complained about the brightness. We could only get them 6 feet off the floor, the owner of the studio won't let us put them in the rafters where they belong. Then my instructor got another set, slightly better. With those, plus mine, plus a couple of wash lights the club bought, they had a fairly decent setup. Not pro level by any means, but workable. My instructor's husband knows a bit about stage lighting, under his direction the lights were setup and weren't bad at all.
Then comes this show. Club president brings in all the lights EXCEPT the ones my instructor had bought - they were apparently in a storage unit somewhere, not kept with the rest of the lights. President and my instructors are also Coven sisters, and president knows she screwed the pooch. But to make this craptastic scene complete, instructor insisted I set up my (unattended) video cam off to one side...
The upshot is: 1) Instructor's husband did the stills, and is PISSED OFF about the lighting. He was actually able to finagle most of the pictures into a usable state because he shot in RAW, thank Goddess. 2) The video is trash. One of the troupes wore bright white dresses, and those got blown out, yet the back of the stage area is muddy - but the biggest gripe is that I was forced to put the camera to one side, arguments got me nowhere, and I was already doing the video against my better judgement.
So - instructor's husband isn't going to do it again, I'm ONLY going to do the video again if I have COMPLETE control over lighting, camera placement, and keeping audience smartphones the hell out of the field of view. I'm not more pissed about it for the simple reason that I didn't put much effort into the thing as I couldn't attend the camera and dance at the same time. So - GIGO - Garbage In, Garbage Out.
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