Light Dance
Nov, 2013Views
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Behind The Lens
Location
This was taken in my dance studio in N.C. I'm a retired dancer that starting shooting to give me better shots to draw... Yes, I was a portrait artist (dry mediums). As I traveled around, as a professional dancer, I took jobs drawing portraits. So to be efficient, I took their pictures (with a early age digital point & shoot camera) so they wouldn't have to sit so long for a session for me to draw them. This soon crossed over to shooting dancers on the side of the stage during performances. As I worked with lighting designers through the years, it pushed my interest to get better. So this shot was with my first DSLR & many experiments with light & dancers.Time
This was shot in the evening. It was part of a bigger shoot that involved many different lighting techniques. This series was the most fun to explore because at the time I hadn't read much about this technique and loved the concept of feeling like I was actually painting the picture.Lighting
This lighting was with a cheap LED flash light my father got me for christmas one year. There weren't many around at that time, but I liked the lights intensity & focus. As a dancer, I understood how energy travels throughout the body when in motion, which to me was the easy part. The dancers had the hard part as they had to stay perfectly still during the shoot and maintain these tough positions and in complete darkness. As I moved around them, I tried to create a since of movement in there muscles and on the floor, while highlighting important areas to draw your eye. As I moved around, I used different technique to create the different lighting. To create the light trails, the LED faced the camera. To create the different highlighted parts of their bodies, the LED only faced the dancers and when I highlighted the one dancers face, I stayed there longer than the any other part. There was a surprise effect going on in the background. Earlier we were shooting in this corner and using the mirror to reflect a photo flood for a different technique, but during this shoot, it ended up adding some bonus ghosting behind them... I didn't plan, but really liked the effect.Equipment
I shot this with my Canon Rebel T1i and an 18-55 kit lens at f5.0, ISO: 100 with shutter priority set at 10sec. on a tripod. I was wearing dark clothing as I quickly moved around with my little LED flashlight. Very basic for light painting.Inspiration
I liked being able to completely control the lighting. Even though this was in my early years of shooting, I'd had a lot of lighting experience with dance. I also wanted to show the way the dancers lines by using positive and negative space & while giving a strong since of kinetic energy.Editing
I did very little post processing in Photoshop. Just to clean up a little movement from the dancers, but that's all other than that.In my camera bag
Now I shoot with a Canon 7d and a Sony a6000 and use a Tamaron 18-50mm 2.8 VC, Canon 50mm 1.8, 85mm 1.8 and Canon 70-200 2.8L IS II. and always have at least 1 - Paul Buff Einstein E640 studio flash when traveling and keep all my other gear in my shop.Feedback
Light painting takes patience, trial & error and a good since of imagination. Now, it seems like this technique is everywhere. You just have to make it your own and keep playing. Remember, mistakes are just other ways you hadn't thought of yet. All your ideas might not work for one shoot, but usually gives you more ideas for another one. Really good dancers make the best models, they know how to do about anything and anything you can't think of, they can probably come up with something a lot more interesting... Keep shooting!
