{"id":1631,"date":"2020-04-29T13:29:03","date_gmt":"2020-04-29T13:29:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/?p=1631"},"modified":"2020-05-01T13:59:08","modified_gmt":"2020-05-01T13:59:08","slug":"dance-photography-on-portobello-beach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/dance-photography-on-portobello-beach\/","title":{"rendered":"Dance Photography on Portobello Beach"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paul Distefano is a graduate of the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, and I was very privileged to do a shoot with him on Portobello beach. He is the first world class dancer I photographed. I could have said world class athlete, because it is absolutely amazing what he can do.<\/p>\n

We were very lucky with the Scottish weather, as there was a gorgeous blue sky this late afternoon. After some warm up shots that didn\u2019t pan out (I never worry about getting it right the first time around, the most important thing is to get started), we shot a \u201cWest Side Story\u201d style sequence of jumps.<\/p>\n

\"Paul
While I could have used the burst mode on my camera, I preferred to time the shot to get Paul at the right moment.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Paul
A different style of jump.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Paul
I totally did not anticipate this kind of jump.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I noticed Paul wore a dark yellow sweater under his leather jacket. Yellow provides great colour contrast with blue, so I asked Paul to take off his jacket. In order to rest his feet for a while, he showed me some incredible balance tricks.<\/p>\n

\"Dancer
I find this balance trick very impressive, don’t you?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was then time for another series of jump shots. I never got so many keepers on other shoots, and I believe it is because Paul is able to control his movements with great consistency. Once I had my timing right, I could press the shutter at precisely the same time over and over again catching Paul at the \u201cdecisive moment\u201d as Cartier-Bresson would put it.<\/p>\n

\"Dancer
Yet a different type of jump.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
A slight change in foot orientation and hand position quite changes the photograph. I prefer the shot above. Which one do you like best?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
The first in a series of similar jumps.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
I believe these three pics were taken in succession (or with at most one missed shot in between).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
This is my favourite of the series.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Paul then offered to jump from the stairs, which I thought was a bit mad, because I know I would have injured myself badly trying this stunt. He told me he could only attempt this jump two or three times, as it is quite tough on his feet. No kidding. I had my camera on burst shooting mode and I got the picture I was looking for on the first try.<\/p>\n

\"Dancer
Please don’t try this unless you really know what you are doing!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

That was enough jumping for the day. Paul then showed me some ballet poses. As you can see, world class dancers are not only top athletes, but also incredibly graceful in their movements.<\/p>\n

\"Dancer
My favourite.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
Having the subject looking up gives you flattering light on his face.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
More dramatic lighting on Paul’s face, compared to the above picture.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
Looking at the camera.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Dancer
I prefer the looking down picture. Do you?<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Finally, as the sun set, we did a quick sequence of shots against the evening sky. The picture below is my favourite.<\/p>\n

\"Dancer
Without a speedlight on him, Paul would have been too dark relative to the sky. The artificial light also adds a bit of drama.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paul Distefano is a graduate of the Joffrey Ballet School in New York, and I was very privileged to do…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[415,253,149,150,414,188,416,240,413,100,359],"class_list":["post-1631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ballet","tag-beach","tag-dance","tag-dancer","tag-distefano","tag-edinburgh","tag-joffrey","tag-jump","tag-paul","tag-portobello","tag-school","has-thumbnail"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Dance-Photography-Portobello-Paul-Distefano-Philippe-Monthoux-05-600x400.jpg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/04\/Dance-Photography-Portobello-Paul-Distefano-Philippe-Monthoux-05-600x600.jpg","author_info":{"display_name":"PhilsBlog","author_link":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/author\/philsblog\/"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1631"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1657,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1631\/revisions\/1657"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/philippemonthoux.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}