History Pt Deux
Continuing the history lesson…
Our stroll down memory lane begins a few years after the founding of CPSalsa (detailed in Part 1).
We had been foundering for a while, struggling to get students and even struggling to get the motivation to run a night. Jeff was on sabbatical touring as many Asian countries as he could and Sieno had disappeared for a while as well, which left the remaining officers, Bruce, Kim, Celina, Rogelio, Ana, Enrique, and me to run the show. Unfortunately, we weren’t quite up to the task without the fiery passion of Sieno and the obsessiveness of Jeff.
Jeff comes back
But we held out until Jeff made his return. As soon as he got back he began recruiting again, enlisting a beginner named Billy, who became the new president, Dave, another future president, and Caitlin, a fabulous west coast swing dancer by day/salsa dancer by night. By this time, I had also just finished my first design of CPSalsa’s website, so I showed it to Jeff, who had doubts about ever seeing a finished product since I offered my services for free way back before he left. Surprised by what he saw, and noticing that I had done a lot of the graphical touches myself, he began running ideas by me about advertising.
Enter the photoshoots
It was also around this time that a new dancer by the name of Sarah started coming along, getting hooked not only with our dances, but our weekly pilgrimage to Santa Barbara to dance at Ruby’s. It just so happened that she was a photography major and wanted to shoot some dance related photos. After an initial shoot with Jeff, Mariela, a girl named Ashley, and me done up in red, Jeff and I thought it might be fun to get another shoot with a bunch of our regulars–this time with a bunch of different, comical themes. So off we went, shooting Billy as a redneck, me as a nerd, stuff with salsa (the dip) in a bowl, plays on A Few Good Men, and plays on milk advertising with Dave and Kim (got salsa?). I worked with Jeff to post-process the images and out came our fall advertising for 2004.
The results were stellar, with lots of people coming to our lessons and dances and a bunch of new people willing to help out as officers. We were on the upswing, excited about how popular our dances were becoming. Meanwhile, Jeff, I, and some other officers, like newly added Charlie, were just getting started on this photoshoot thing. Jeff and I were thinking of other movie tie-ins like American Beauty, and Spiderman, when Charlie mentioned doing something with firemen. It sounded like a good idea, so we threw that in as well. It was time to do another photoshoot…
To be continued…
Khang Duong
The young'ns call me 'legend' ;), I just go by Khang