I was on vacation in London when my favourite pole dancer (excluding my lovely wife obviously) Henriikka Roo asked me if I were available and interested in shooting the Christmas show of the dance studio she’s giving lessons at. People who know me also know that I’m not that good at saying no to such questions. It didn’t take long to close the deal.

I’ve been shooting at such events before but this time was going to be different for a couple of reasons:

1) Instead of shooting for an hour or two I’d be spending 7-8 hours on location and photographing EVERY single act (over 70 of them!).

2) A small part of the commission was a gift certificate to the studio. 🙂

I was well prepared when arriving to the locaction (Tampere-talo) and I had two cameras (+ one backup) and 7 different lenses with me. Everything was set and I was ready for the show to begin – until the security guard came and told I couldn’t keep my camera bag under my seat. So I had to hide it next to the stage and shove 2 smaller lenses into my pockets in case the ones on cameras weren’t the ideal ones. That’s the beauty of the m4/3 system I’m using: even the quality lenses are small enough to fit inside pockets. Try fitting a 70-200mm f/2.8 full frame lens inside your pocket and tell me how it goes. That’s exactly what I did with my wife’s Panasonic 35-100mm f/2.8. 😉

One of the two lenses I started shooting with turned out to be far from ideal but it didn’t take long until I slapped my trusted Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm f/1.8 on my other E-M5 and was ready to shoot again. The 45mm lens was a nice partner to the 12-40mm f/2.8 I was using on the main camera (E-M5). Perhaps I should have used my Olympus M.Zuiko 75mm f/1.8 as well but for some reason I didn’t. I did end up cropping a handful of pictures a bit too much so apparently the 75mm lens would have been perfect for some solo acts (such as Henriikka’s or Terhi Tavi’s).

You can find some of my photos from the event below but if you want more, just click on the following link: Studio Moven joulunäytös 2018.