Hi All,

I (Angela) was convinced by a few people to spearhead a Lindy picnic. It'll be very informal, which means I'm not going to haul out the big old sound system, make reservations or anything else. It really will just be me with a big boom box waiting for people to come eat and dance with me. I was also convinced to do a lesson. If anyone wants to bring me lunch, I will teach for food and any donations people feel like giving. Please let me know if you are interested in the lesson, otherwise I will pack my lunch.

There is nothing scheduled at the Highland Park Bowl stage so far, so I will say meet there. If there is someone else there, we will meet at the flag pole in Highland Park next to the reservoir (enter on Reservoir Ave & walk up the path).

Highland Park Bowl is located on South Ave between Robinson Dr and Reservoir Ave, near Highland Hospital.

If it rains I have room for a few people at my house for lunch and games/movie for the afternoon (otherwise, Canceled).

If no one shows up around 12:30, I will eat and go home.

Email me or post if you have questions to the Facebook Lindy Jam group. Hope to see you!

Well, it's been a while since the site launched and I haven't had anyone tell me they're interested in blogging here, so I figured I'd kick it off myself.

One of my hobbies is photography, so I decided to write about that. This post will be about taking better photos at dances with a simple point-and-shoot digital camera. It's meant for people that don't know anything technical about photography. If you do know a little about photography this probably won't tell you anything new, but you might like my post about Shooting Girl Jam on my own blog.

The problem

Taking good photos at swing dances is, unfortunately, pretty hard. The places we dance in are often big, dark rooms with lots of quickly moving dancers.

There are two ways people normally try to take photos at dances. The first is without using flash at all. Those pictures usually turn out blurry, like this one:

Why does that happen? The problem is that there's not enough light for your camera to take in, so it has to leave the shutter open longer. That means your photos will be blurry if your hands move (which you can fix with a tripod) or if your subjects move. Since carrying around a tripod is a huge pain and dancers move a lot, you get blurry photos.

The obvious solution is to use your camera's normal flash. This will eliminate the blurriness because the flash only lasts about 1/10000 to 1/1000 of a second. No one moves very much in that amount of time, so everything looks sharp.

The problem with just using the regular flash is that it only lights up whatever is within a couple meters of your camera. Your friends will be sharp, but everything else in the picture fades into inky blackness and the photos all end up looking pretty much the same, like this one:

They're sharp, but the background looks dark and there are a lot of ugly shadows around everyone. What can we do to make it better?

The solution

There's a simple way to help fix both of those problems. It won't make everything perfect, but it will help a lot more than you might expect.

The trick is to use both a slow shutter speed and the flash. You can do this by looking for something called "slow sync flash" or "night portrait" mode on your camera. Every camera maker calls is something different, so if you can't find it post a comment here and I'll look it up for you.

Here's what happens when you use this feature:

Magic! Your friends are fairly sharp and you can still see the surroundings! How does this work? The flash lights up everything close to you (your friends) and does so in a really short burst of light, which makes them appear sharp.

After the flash finishes the camera keeps the shutter open and the rest of the light in the room trickles in and fills in the rest of the picture. The parts of the picture not lit by the flash will still be blurry if your hands shake, but since your subjects are sharp that doesn't really matter so much.

I hope this helped! If you have any questions feel free to post a comment or email me and I'll try to help out. Now get out there, take some pictures, and post them to flickr!

Thanks for stopping by! First of all, the site is a work in progress. Expect cool new features whenever I find myself with some free time. If there's something you'd like to see, let me know!

This is your site!

I may have coded the backend half of the site, but its contents are up to you: the Rochester Lindy Hop community. My goal is to make it easy for any of you to add stuff to the site. That way it's not just a reflection of a single person's interests but mirrors those of the community as a whole.

What can you do?

Right now there are a couple of ways you can contribute to the site. You can add links to the links page and you can add quotes that will show up at the top of the site. You can also sign up to DJ at Lindy Jam.

If you'd like to write articles for this blog about swing dancing, jazz/blues music, or the Rochester scene in general email me at steve@stevelosh.com and I can set you up for that.

What are some of the nifty features so far?

These days cell phones are pretty much universal. We all have them and use them constantly, so I wanted to take advantage of that.

Right now the site uses text messaging in two ways. First, if you sign up to DJ you can put in your phone number and you'll get a text message a couple of hours before Lindy Jam reminding you that you signed up.

You can also add a quote to the site by text messaging it to quotes@lindyjam.com if you're at a dance and someone says something sweet. That way you don't have to remember to add it when you get home at 4 AM after dancing for seven straight hours.

What about a calendar or a forum?

Alex created RochesterLindyHop.com which already has both of those. Making a second calendar or forum would be silly; it's better to have everything in one place. Go there to find out what's happening and talk about it!

This blog and the forum should be used for separate things; the forums should be for general discussion between lots of people and for announcing/talking about events. This blog should be used for longer, thoughtfully crafted, well-written articles from people in our scene and discussing those articles.

Where to from here?

I hope you like the new site. if you have any feedback on the design I'd love to hear it.

Like I said before, this is your site. I'm only one person, but we can make something really cool if we all contribute. Start adding links and quotes, or talk to me about blogging and help get the site rolling!