Urban Ballerina
Jan, 2016Views
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Contest Finalist in Lets Dance Photo Contest
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo were taken in Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. It's a particular street in the downtown. It's not so crowded, but is surrounded by banks, schools, restaurants. The windows that appear behind the ballerina are from an old house that still exists in the middle of new buildings.Time
This is one of my favourite images. This ballerina is super beautiful and talented. We were shooting during all the afternoon of a saturday. And it was not necessary to make a bunch of images. Only twice with burst mode. When we saw the picture in the camera she said: WOW, here we have THE one. I agreed. I gave her one copy that she put in a frame and it makes me proud of the decision to make the project that includes a series of other images with the theme. It's called Urban Ballerina.Lighting
I wanted a soft light, with no shadows in her face or body. And I didn't wanted a flash, because, can you imagine being in the middle of the street, downtown, with a girl dressed in a magenta dress and include flash on top of that? This could have caused a comotion!Equipment
This was shot on a Canon 7D, an 18-135m lens and with no tripod or other photography stuff.Inspiration
I shoot a series of photos of this particular girl (Urban Ballerina). The idea was take her in places when a ballerina it's not commonly seen, like streets, parks and avenues. The project shows classic and contemporary ballet poses in a bunch of locations. An uncommon stage to grand jeté, assemblé, temps levé… French names that can be translated to lightness. Or, even better than translated, things that can be felt because dance is an universal language. The other photos can be seen around here in ViewBug and in my website: www.priscilamaboni.comEditing
Post-processing is an essencial part of the workflow. Some adjustments can be done directly in Lr, like basic exposure, contrast and major developments in highlights, lights, shadows and blacks. Remove noise and chromatic aberration are also pretty important, specially if your lens do not have prime quality. But certain things are best achieved in Photoshop. In this particular case, the dress has a knot in the back and it appeared with the movement. So I removed to keep the distractions away.In my camera bag
I love the 50mm lens and the 35mm lens. I shoot mostly portraits, so I try to give the faces the importance they have. Blurred backgrounds are always a good thing to keep the attention in a portrait photo. Then I prefer fast lenses. And I always take a 24-70mm lens or similar in case of some ballerina appear and do some spacatto (just kidding).Feedback
Plan your shootings and be prepared with a lot of ideais, specially if you are going to shoot a model. Try to make it soft and when a pose it's not working, just leave it. If you have another pose in mind, encourage it. When the person don't get the idea or simply can't make a pose, you'll end up with a super frustration. Study hard and look for the photos of other photographers. ViewBug, for example, is here for all of us.
