Dance Photography: Emiley and Katie

Being visual artists, dancers definitely need to showcase their abilities with professional photography and/or video. Dance photography is definitely a niche I’d like to develop. This is why I’ve been doing quite a few personal projects with student dancers.

Emiley and Katie gave me another opportunity to practice my dance photography skills. The shoot for this personal project took place at Edinburgh College, Granton campus, in one of their dance studios.

Jumping dancer in front of black background in a dance studio — For this kind of photograph, timing is everything. Since I used speedlights and their recycle time is quite long, I couldn’t use the motor drive on the camera. I had one try at nailing the shot for every jump.

I love to light dancers with two lights. The lights are placed symmetrically on each side of the dancer, at about 3 metres from the subject and slightly behind. I really like the look of this lighting setup. In the photograph below, you can see the two sets of shadows produced by my two speedlights.

Dancer posing in front of back background in a dance studio. — I chose a low angle for this photograph for a variety of reasons. The dancer’s legs appear slightly longer and I got a nice reflection in the floor.

When I talked to Emily about the kinds of pics we could take, she mentioned that she’s able to ‘jump on the floor’. I had no idea what this meant until she showed me. As you can see from the picture below, we got quite a dynamic photograph out of it.

Dancer acrobatics in front of a black background in a dance studio — Emiley ‘jumping on the floor’. It was tricky to get the timing right for this photograph, as the best picture is obtained while the dancer is in full motion.

I like to work with two dancers, as one of them can rest while I photograph the other. Katie had quite a few moves and jumps up her sleeve too, and the pics below are my two favourites.

Dancer jumping in front of a black background in a dance studio. — I always include the floor in jump shots, as it allows one to see how high the dancer can jump.

At the end of the session, I took photographs of Emiley and Katie together. For these I changed the lighting setup to have a main light in an umbrella and a bare speedlight as a back light.