Photography at competitions - Western Australia

Ballroom dancing competition organisers regularly deal with complex copyright issues relating to music, photography, and videography, and quite rightly too as a lot of effort and skill goes into creating the right feel and imagery for dancers to enjoy. 

DSI , one of the premier dance clothing ateliers in the UK, 'has (since 2012) been privileged to have the exclusive filming rights to all major UK dance competitions' and sells subscriptions to its live broadcast channel DSI TV  along with copies of DVDs of major competitions around the world. They often post warnings on their Insta to dancers about filming at their competitions and reminding them that they have sole rights to footage. As a competitor, you can either risk being caught and dealing with the legal consequences, or pay for package deals where a filmographer will capture your events and focus on you. 

Fortunately, here in Western Australia at least, the situation is a lot less complex. As we are a small community of dancers and interest in competitions is also small, sponsorships do not generally affect the casual filming of events. Music licences are paid much the same as, for example, a gym or other type of dance studio. Many of us local dancers will offer to film each other - generally for feedback purposes or for family and friends who cannot be at the event.

Some competitions here do attract larger crowds though, and as such this is when we often have the luxury of professional photographers to choose from, as several will turn up to the large events rather than just the one or two. We were fortunate to be blessed with an amazing local photographer who understands ballroom dance well at one of the last competitions we did. 

Photo by Blair Johnson 2024 @blairzjohnson

One of my casual hobbies is finding pleasure in taking good photographs, and these photos make my soul sing. I am usually never happy with photos of me/us dancing, (for varying reasons, none to do with the photographer!) so receiving these and being able to purchase high quality copies for printing and framing was a real treat. 

But this then got me thinking about watermarks and the process of showing off your favourite works without it being attributed to someone else. While I do believe that this can, and will, be done without your knowledge if you are the 'average' person online, I feel that if you attempt to make it slightly harder, then at least you feel somewhat accomplished! 

So I went in search of a watermark-making app that was simple to use. I found Watermarkly. Ridiculously easy to use, and you can import your own watermark previously made, or create within the app. From downloading to final product took me 5 minutes. And that was mostly because I had to decide on a signature. Can it be photoshopped off? Definitely. Is the threat of nasty people always an issue wherever you go, internet or otherwise? Yes. But the effort to be protected has been made.

My other blog, Everydaybeautyinlife, will have more photos on it with watermarks from now on, as I don't get to photograph dance very often as I'm, naturally, rather busy on competition days. So not a lot of photographs on this blog, sorry!

I do look forward to seeing more photos from dance photographers that I can share though - I did see two cameras in use at the competition this weekend and I'm hoping one of them had the black and white film contained within...

Keep dancing! -Randombaubles/Ineke