Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011

Nathan Clendenin wrote this ...

I had a lot of fun working this month with Deepak Raj Dugar who is a first year resident in Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery and a Bhangra dancer. It's a different experience to meet a doctor who is really just starting out in his career. His enthusiasm and energy are apparent, which also comes across in the video.

If you're wondering what Bhangra dancing is, think Indian hip-hop with very traditional roots. And speaking of tradition, it's really interesting to meet not only Deepak, born in the U.S. to Indian immigrants, but also the entire UNC Bhangra team, many of them also the second-generation of their families here in the U.S. They are deeply connected to their Indian roots, but also bring a new Western influence to the traditional Bhangra dance form.  Not to mention they're all really talented, and super friendly.

Before you hit play, find your head phones or crank up your speakers for some awesome beats. Also, if you click on the bottom right button for full-screen (or just view on YouTube), you can select to watch in HD, which I highly recommend!

This month I experimented a bit with a special lens called a tilt-shift. Traditionally used in architecture photography to capture challenging spaces while maintaining focus across a broad area, it can actually be used for the opposite, which is what I was going for. By limiting the field of focus, and shooting from a high angle it begins to transform reality into a miniature scene with tiny dancers. Lots of people have been using tilt-shift to make really interesting time-lapse videos comprised of thousands of photos compiled to make time pass quickly. Check out YouTube videos tagged "tilt-shift" for some fun examples. Since I am already shooting on a digital SLR camera that does stills and video, it was easy to put on the Canon TS-E 45mm f/2.8 tilt-shift on the Canon 5D Mark II body and start shooting.