A Dance Study
This past weekend I photographed my favorite subjects — dancers. Christina of Lisa Performing Arts in the Bay Area contacted me to shoot some of the girls at the dance school and we met on a chilly early morning to play around with poses, leaps, and powder!
After not shooting for over a year I’m so excited to get back into it again! I’m finally starting to build out my own studio (aka buy a lot of expensive random things) and wanted to test shooting with natural light. I wanted to see how close we could get to replicating the effect of studio lighting (not quite) and get back into the swing of working with models/dancers and directing them in the context of a photoshoot.
What I love about the gallery above is showing the progression from clean and organized to messy and chaotic, which is always fun. I was hesitant to try shooting powder without lights, but we gave it a shot and I love the light and shadow it adds to an otherwise black and white image. It also adds gradient and depth to the backdrop, creating an Oliphant/Schmidli backdrop effect.
My editing style has always been perfectionist. Dust spots out, grass perfect, sun flares be gone. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve gotten lazier, but over time I’ve learned to prefer the image showing the messy parts, the constructed backdrop setup, à la Leibovitz. It adds an element of behind the scenes to things and tells a story beyond the boundaries of the backdrop itself. It’s quite journalistic in the way it takes away the notion of heavy Photoshop because it tells scene it like it is — messy and real.
Getting back into dance photography is always fun, but definitely comes with the learning curve I lost touch with this past year. But I’m planning more shoots and rediscovering why I love dance photography so much. For me, it’s not about the technical skill (sorry, dancers) but about the way we meld dance expressions with portraiture. I want to express a feeling, not capture a technically perfect image. It all about the lines, facial expression, light, and fashion coming together to create a mood. And that’s not science, but art.
That’s where the creativity comes in. As an artist, the best part about what you do is a lifetime of experimentation and discovery. I can’t wait to start that journey again.
At a museum full of ancient art and sculptures, being able to replicate that artistic expression and the beauty of the human body outside its walls was a vision come true.
The air was cool and breezy, a refreshing break from the historical San Francisco June gloom. With a bag full of leotards and fabrics, we were ready to play.
It all about the lines, facial expression, light, and fashion coming together to create a mood. And that’s not science, but art.
We rented out Little Boxes Theater in San Francisco, and made mermaid dreams come true in a water tank!
This photoshoot with Anica was so much fun. It was my first time shooting dance in New York, and I wanted to avoid the Central Park stereotype just to see what I could come up with.
I had the change to test with Dee of Stetts Model Management last month before I left New York
Inspired by Herb Ritts, I went to Coney Island with model and dancer Anica, and played around with chiffon, the sand, and the water.
There's something about incorporating motion into photographs that adds just a bit more excitement and interest into a still. I envisioned something simple and classic for one last dance shoot with Andrea.
I wanted to create fine art images, complete with dramatic lighting and textured backdrops.
I'm learning to love shadows and darkness in my photos. There's so much depth in contrast, something largely different from clean spotless white background stock photos. No human subject should be photographed like a dull product.
I wanted to create photos full of movement, flow, energy, and grace. With some dresses I thrifted and my dancing muse Andrea, we shot these dreamy images in the studio.
I'm sure you've seen the work of Alexander Yakovlev. He captures dancers in motion, floating amongst a whirlwind of flour. And the results are jawdroppingly beautiful. Who wouldn't want to attempt to replicate that?
I got the chance to participate in Cal Poly's Spring Dance Concert again this year. Here are some snippets of the experience from my little camera's point-of-view.
I got the chance to hang out with my super energetic and goofy and talented great-grandlittle, Sophia, in the photo studio the other day.
There's something so feminine and powerful about the way they move their bodies, and the way a dress reciprocates their every step, every leap, every twirl.
Catching glimmering moments of golden light during my favorite time of day as my favorite dancers pranced around the hills dressed to the nines...the shoot was nothing short of magical.
During a last minute work trip to New York last week, I squeezed in a studio session with my friend Anica. What a treat getting to book space in a city where photography still exists.