This F.A.Q. is a list of anwers (and thoughts) to commonly heard questions/remarks/requests/thoughts/topics as I do photography and videos in tango.
Note from September 2022: A F.A.Q. existed since nearly this section's beginning but, some years ago I removed it, reworked it, wasn't fully satisfied then removed it again around 2019. I can't find time to properly wrap all my ideas at once. My idea right now is to publish what I have, even if it's not perfect and let it evolve progressively, when it's ready.
This page can change at any time, parts may be added or missing or draft-like or temporary. This is also one of these catch-all-type pages where extra and redundant information is considered better than missing information.
My headquarter page for tango is https://thomasconte.net/tango/. It doesn't directly contain much but will point you at where they are published.
If this can help, here is a "flatter" form of list (not necessarily exhautive):
Videos
Photographs
Please refer to "Conditions of use" page first, if still unclear ask me on "Contact" page or other ways you may know.
Long story short
Short story long
One of my goals now is to create "beauty" and "memories".
I have enjoyed computer-based creation/creativity since late nineties... I am not a very "good" consumer in general as I always found more satisfaction in creating than in consuming..." (Hence, most of what I consume are things that allow me to produce something, but also things that may inspire me... Music and anything audio have a special place there as they can more easily be consumed while creating something else that does not use ears.).
My past works extended from "local private jokes" to some "worldwide successes (in the scope of their specific audiences)".
I do not actually call myself "an artist" as I am often relying on technical and technological aspects, more than on composing and story-telling or such, but there is always some kind of creation process involved.
Through this, I also grew some kind of fascination for "digital quality", precision, data accuracy... I mean "data" in a very broad sense, which may include image, but also sounds, words/semantics/language, data structures, ideas… I feel the same kind of fascination even when writing text (and I mean simply building sentences with words).
I'm never or very rarely 100% satisfied with things I do, but I generally aim for lasting quality rather ephemeral quantity.
Creativity for me has not always been about creating beauty... There was a time when I would enjoy literally anything unexpected, surprising or unusual. That was around the begennings of the Internets and some years onwards, a time which felt a bit like we were progessively gaining access to a whole new world, but way before being today's oversized information flow.
Nowadays, I see creating beauty as a way to escape violence... and possibly sometimes to fight it...
But that's a bit of a subtle and complex thinking... I am not talking about any kind of political/sociological communication campaign... I had a very long text project about violence and then how creating beauty would oppose to it... but I haven't found the right way to put it down.
(Please also don't colour anything I say here with any kind of mysticism...)
Another goal, but it is related to the first one, is that once something is created, I may enjoy sharing it. On one side, that is a very logical thing, if you create something that is shareable, you don't want to see it remain in a shelve. Then I hope that people will like enjoy and that it will make their day or their life a little better.
Finally, I started photography in tango. I mean that before tango I was shooting pictures sometimes but rather "like a tourist", I didn't give them so much attention. Hence, photography is rather naturally linked to tango for me. (It was not the case for video, I had done some video editing before.)
I already wrote some of these somewhere, but there are various reasons why I like the universe of tango
(Joke version) Because it is better for everyone when I don't dance.
I wrote a few texts on how I started tango, why I never danced much and then why I stopped dancing... which may have some overlaps with this page.
[When I think about it I should add links here.]
It often takes a lot of time (sometimes weeks or months) between taking pictures and publishing. Reasons include (the facts that) :
There is also no guarantee that a given picture will make it to the final selection as there are many reasons why it can get discarded during selection or editing. Typically, there are flaws that can only be seen the big screen.
A joke about it could be that if you hope to get a picture of yourself with a given person you like, there are chances that you will have been together and already broke up by the time the pictures are ready. (I can think of at least on person to whom it happened twice.) Maybe it is better not ask after all...
For more details about how long it can take, please refer to the answer to question "Oh, it must take a lot of work to select pictures‽".
Choose some option(s):
* Most of the work for both photography and video is done after the events and require to find a lot of time when I can focus to do quality work, usually multiple nights of works for one night of shooting photographs and hours or days of encoding and re-encoding regarding video. So maybe I'm just already busy enough at the moment and I don't want to take one more photo album in charge right now, which would only be ready in weeks or months and would also delay other works.
And keep in mind these are not professional activities for me so they can never be my top priorities, and yet they are not my only possible activities.
In the past, I used to accumulate many and albums could not be finish without a 3 or more months delay. This is not fun. I would like to accumulate a maximum of 1 or 2 albums at a time and my current ideal pace would be something like 1 to 3 albums per month (depending on the quantity in each album and on the rest of my agenda). But sometimes, like in May and June, a lot of special events usually happen short periods of time...
There is much more to do than just "selecting"... Right now, my workflow for photography would go something like this:
* Homecrafted software may bring help and/or extra step allowing more possibilities than what most photographers use, but they sometimes require spending time programming to make them evolve and in rare cases just to maintain them.
[Here I plan to add some BPMN flow diagram or such for the above description, "when" I'll find the time for it.]
For videos, workflow is somehow similar but time requirements may be spread differently. Especially the refinements and archiving phases that require less "human time" but a lot more "computer time". "Computer time" has the advantage of leaving the human free to do other things, but it makes computers less easy to use, and I would say that it is not recommended to overload GPU or storage drives during rendering, hence it may also delay other projects.
If you see that I'm shooting photographs, just ask me.
Please mention if it is just for this time or permanently.
Most people like to get pictures, but a few people don't.
I do not need to know the personal reasons why someone does not want photographs. (I may ask out of curiosity or if I feel like there's something personnal going on, but you don't have to reply.)
And I usually have a good memory for this, but it may fail so don't hesitate to remind me in case I forgot.
In this cas, it is possible that I still send you in private some pictures already taken, but it is also likely that I will stop shooting you. The reason is that if I have to send pictures privately individually to each person, it requires too much extra work, so I will rather count you among the people who don't want to be photographed.
Also ask for it, I try to remember this kind of things.
But, except in some specific cases, I think that it may be a mistake. I think that a better way to go is that you configured your Facebook profile so that you get notified when you are tagged but you need to confirm if you want the content to appear on your profile or not.
[If I find time, I am thinking of adding a tutorial on how to do this here. But I am not sure to ever do it though, especially since Facebook's UI may change at any time.]
Contact me using "Contact" page or other ways you may know. Be very precise about what you want to remove because it there is any ambiguity I will wait until it is made clear(because removing something and then realising it was something else that had to be removed and then reuploading the first thing is far from an ideal situation.)
No. Because the dancers in my videos always dance on copyrighted music.
When YouTube detects copyrighted music, it can force ads to appear at the beginning of the video, and these ads' revenues go to YouTube and to the copyright owners of the music (or at least, the entity that registered this music in YouTube's system... some abuses exists). I read that since some time, the video creator can gets a ration of the profit according to the ratio of copyrighted song against the length of the video, but I believe that you still don't get anything for the image if copyrighted music is playing on top of it.
Additionnally, even if they may get paid, if you monetise videos with copyrighted music, you increase the risks of receive a YouTube "stike" from the copyright owners.
For these reasons, my channel is not monetised at all.
Because this is how I look when I'm having fun :-)
I probably always look like I'm thinking because it is something I like to do. That doesn't mean that I'm not enjoying the moment.
And I cannot really do the "smile" facial expression, I mean I cannot do it on purpose. People say that I smile in some conversation, but I think it's mainly when I'm laughing.
No.
But yes, this has been going on for years... People with Asperger kids tell me that I have Asperger's syndrome, as their kids... People with "gifted" kids tell me I'm "gifted", as their kids...
To my best knowledge, there must be some truth to these statements.
(Asperger's doesn't officially exist anymore* but instead matches mild forms of autism.)
For me it is not about not wanting to communicate, it is mostly about many things that seem natural for others than I cannot really express, or not in the right ways. And sometimes not understanding the reasons why or how others express certain things... Also about the fact that having a positive, constructive, inclusive mindset is natural to me, hence I don't feel the necessity to express it. (Note: I am not using "inclusive" in the modern political sense here, though it may about including people in actions/activities too.)
But no, I didn't get a diagnostic when I was a kid. And in my country, for adults, the waiting list is more than four years long. (I just heard on the news that for kids it is already more than two years long.)
And when I was a kid, people simply used to tell me that I was the next Albert Einstein or the next Bill Gates... Back then I simply thought they were not making sense and also that there never was much in common between Einstein and Gates... By the way, appart from various degrees of interest in physics and IT, I am nowhere near any of these guys now. But, to keep it simple, you don't think of a diagnostic when people see you that way.
I would be interested in such a diagnostic, but at the same time, I am not fond of "labels".
The only official thing I actually got was (long ago but as an adult) an IQ test which was "slightly below gifted"... but also, I think that, if there is any truth about "giftedness", it is burried under mountains of psycho-marketing trying-to-make-you(or your kids)-feel-special grab-your-money information flood... and I don't find it very reliable in the end...
Then, it's worth wathever it's worth, I also checked in "DSM V" myself...
In conclusion: I cannot be sure. I am not looking for labels (other than their semantical help in writing or conversation). Multiple unrelated people told me about it over years. It is not a new topic for me and I can rather openly talk about it.
* People still use the word Asperger's as it is widely understood and avoids longer explainations... But it does not officially exist anymore since 2013. From what I've heard (should but further fact-checked) Johann Friedrich Karl Asperger was an Austrian doctor who's method was used during World War II to select autistic people... those who could still be useful to society (Asperger's) would live and be assigned work, the others would be sent to extermination camps. I don't know to what point he was involved, or if others simply used his theories. Other than this grim origin, his criteria were probably simply obsolete. Some say that the word should completely disappear... Probably... But it still has the cultural advantage of intelligibility.
I usually try to greet everybody I know, but it is sometimes difficult or unclear.
It may be difficult in example if I am there to make videos... preparing video properly takes a lot of time and focus which may get priority over anything else.
It may be unclear... There was a time when I could remember every single person in tango in my town and around. I also used to be good at remembering birthdays (before Facebook). But since approximately 2018, my social memory has reach some ceiling. Then, because I go out less often, it is not as easy to remember names and faces... Sometimes there are people who go out even less who remember me from months ago... but I'm not always sure if I knew they're name, if we actually talked... Add to this that some people look confusingly similar to other people... Actually, after you met enough people, anybody looks somewhat similar to somebody else... or like a mix of other persons...
Then, I usually greet people who I clearly remember chatting with at least one. But nowadays it's more difficult to remember precisely... And there are people who don't necessarily greet, then not greeting them becomes like a habit, or like, I'm not sure what to do...
But yet, after Covid crisis, there are people who will only shake hand, or only greet from afar... which still adds more to the confusion.
Yet another scenario maybe if I come very late to some event, like everybody is already in the place but are almost ready to go... Then it feels a little weird to great tenths of people who were already there.
So in the end if I didn't greet you and you think I should, it's probably not because I want to be rude or because I would be angry at you. (I usually don't get angry at people, and I think the few in this case are well aware of it.) It's just that my social cognition in milongas has been somewhat overloaded, in that moment and/or these years.
I would like to (I was already suggested some exotic destinations such as Dubaï) ... but tango is not a professional activity for me, hence I cannot necessarily book dates that easily.
My photography gear and espescially my video gear take space and weight and I haven't really figured out yet if there is a way I could safely travel with them on a plane (espcially in an age when airline companies would have you travel naked if they could in order to spare a few grams).
This exists on https://thomasconte.net/tango/organisers/ .