Elements of Dance...completed!

Wow, it's good to realize that...we made it!
Elements of Dance is complete and you can enjoy the photos that have been selected by just scrolling down here.
You might want to start from Cesar's images that are 4 posts down...and work your way up to Deborah's. This way you follow the development in time of those images.
I was asked by some of you to make the photos a little bigger and add more of my personal perspective that contributed to creating those images so... enjoy and let me know what you think by leaving a comment so we make this blog more lively!

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Deborah on "earth"

Finally... earth, that along with fire, water and air concludes our "Elements of Dance" project.


With Deborah I wanted to represent a really earthy landscape, so after thinking about it for some time... Marta came up with the idea of the oil wells... like a place were there is a connection between the surface and what is underneath... and I liked it a lot. So, I went around looking for a nice spot... until I found this place near Culver City. I believe Deborah represented this idea very well indeed. I love her pose in the first photo where it looks like she's slowly coming out of the ground, like she's being born...

In the second image instead she's making the first step in this unknown territory. I love her foot strongly planted on the ground. That gives me that idea of robustness and stability I wanted to achieve with her.


But not everything was as nice as it looks like. First there was an ugly fence all around those wells. Second this place is right at the edge of a very busy road with a lot of traffic... at least around sunset! So I needed to set up the lights so that you wouldn't see the fence or other distracting stuff all around... including the road.

Anyway, beside some people yelling at us stuff I can't repeat from their cars... it worked! We managed to "hide" all the unwanted stuff from the images by playing with the lights. I underexposed the sky to make a silhouette out of the oil well until it was dark enough not to see the road behind Deborah.

As for the lights, I had a flash right over her with 1/2 CTO and one camera left with a red gel on it. This time I used cloudy WB to keep the real colors of the sky. Everything was fired by the on camera flash as usual. I wanted an image that overall looked really warm, also to make contrast with Bradley's photos that are very "blue".

After all I'm very pleased with the results of this little project of mine. I learned a lot experimenting with those two lights... who knows, maybe it's time to get a third one...
But most of all I started learning to work in the field, with the sun moving fast, the batteries of the flash dying on me... very different from a studio... very different!

To conclude, I want to thank again Cesar, Caitlyn, Bradley and Deborah for allowing me to work with them; thank you guys!
And last but not least, thanks to Marta for helping me out all over LA in doing this, your help was precious!

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Bradley in "air"

After fire and water, it's time for the third element: air. As you know, I found this spot sometime ago, when I was looking for a place to take Bradley's photos. And here's what we got.

In the first photo, Bradley has a great look! He's looking right into my camera and he seems like he's got there effortlessly. In this shooting I liked the idea of having him flying "over" LA in the image. You don't see the foreground, so that you don't have a reference and you don't know how high he actually is.

While the first shot is very intense, the second is more dramatic. In this image I like the fact that I tilted the camera and that you don't see his face. These images were taken at sunset. I was hoping for some clouds to make the background more dramatic but as you can see...no way!
So, I decided to set the WB to incandescent and to underexpose the background by one stop. This way the sky turned into an intense blue, almost electric, and I liked it for this.

To light Bradley I used the usual two flashes. Both camera left opposite to the sun that was setting on camera right. One flash gelled with 1+1/2 CTO is the key and it's positioned 3/4 on Bradley's side. The other, with a red gelled on it, is strongly underexposed and gives that little red that helps Bradley to pop out of the bright blue sky.

There were other images that I liked a lot but at the end we chose these two for their distinctive look: one were he look at you right into your eyes and one in which he's very dynamic and dramatic. I think they both fit pretty well in this collection.

PS: after we finished shooting and it was getting dark, guess what, a wonderful full moon appeared at the horizon and took some more nice shots of him dancing (not flying this time...) with the moon in the background. We got some good shots but I'll show them in the near future. now I want to move on to the next element...

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Caitlyn in "water"

Since I proposed this project to Caitlyn she was so excited about it that working with her was really fun. Her photos represent water and as I said in a previous post we went to downtown LA to shoot them.

Since water was the topic of these photos, we chose a proper outfit for her. The idea was to have her dancing literally "on" the water...and I can tell you that we actually tried...without much success though. So, we decided that close to those beautiful fountains was actually good enough.
In this photo, her tutu' seems to wave on her like...water... and her grace and elegance are just outstanding.
I like the fact that she's framed by the fountains and the skyscrapers seem to be the audience of her wonderful show. Finally, one detail I really like of this photo is her profile that beside being almost completely in darkness is outlined by the blue light on her left arm.


This photo is less dynamic compared to the previous one but she's just so beautiful in her ballerina outfit. Also, the fact that she's more to the right but looking left I think makes a nice composition.

As far as technical details, in this case they are pretty simple. I exposed for the sky, dropped two stops and then fired the flash camera left with a 1/2 CTB on it. The flash was also snooted to converge most of the light on her. Its position is obvious if you look at the shadow made by her feet. WB was incandescent and the remote flash was fired by the usual on camera flash.

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Cesar on "fire"

I finally managed to finish my first personal project entitled "Elements of Dance" and I'm here to show you the results of my efforts. But, before I do that, allow me to thank Cesar, Caitlyn, Bradley and Deborah that kindly agreed to work with me on this. It was a pleasure to work with you all and I look forward to do it all over again for another assignment.
So, as you know, I want to submit these photos to the Pasadena Art Walk committee and together with Marta we chose two pictures per dancer.
The first two are those of Cesar dancing under the moonlight. In the framework of this project he represents fire for me and I hope he shows it.
You might have seen these already on flickr, but I want to re-propose them here with a few more details about how I made them and in a larger format so that you can better appreciate the images.

This is the first image. Since he represents fire, we chose it because his look makes the picture. I also love his pose, the detail of the dancing shoe appearing from behind the post and the dynamic. I can see him dancing around that post and I like the intensity of his look and the elegance of his movements.

The second image was shot with the same lighting scheme and we liked it better than others because there is a lot of movement in it. The moonlight shining on the floor and the intensity of his performance.
Cesar is a very talented dancer and I hope my photos render justice to his capabilities.

Moving on to the technical details, I used the lamp post as key light, one flash camera left (snooted and gelled for a warm tone) as fill aimed directly over Cesar's upper torso and another one right behind the post set on a wide angle and gelled to give a light bluish tone on the ground as if it was illuminated by the moon. Actually the moon light wasn't strong enough to do that but I gave it a little kick with the flash. WB was incandescent, so the lamp light appeared neutral, the flash camera left was gelled with 1+1/4 CTO and the other one just with 1/2 CTO, that given the WB setting on camera game a nice light blue tone. Everything was fired remotely by the on camera flash. Unfortunately, since one flash was right behind the post, sometimes it was difficult to trigger it, since I had to be in a spot were on camera flash had a direct sight of the flash sensor but the lens didn't. So I had to play a little bit on my position (and Cesar's) to avoid misfiring that light. Also that light helps me rim Cesar with a nice bluish color from the back so that there is a better separation between him and the background.

As usual, if you click on the image you'll see a larger version, but this time is big enough to appreciate it.
Enjoy!

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Elements of Dance

I finally find the time to tell you about my personal project that lately kept me pretty busy.
Not long ago, Deborah, whose photos we are about to take tonight, told me about the Pasadena Art Walk and suggested me that I should try participating. Essentially you need to submit your art work, whatever it is, to the Art Walk Committee and if you pass their screening then you get a 10'x10' booth where you can show and sell your art pieces to the public during the Art Walk weekend. Incidentally they also have a photography category so, I said, why not! I just needed a topic or a theme or... something!

I thought I could send them something I shot in the past. But then, this was an occasion to try something new too good to pass.

So, talking with Marta we came up with this idea...Elements of Dance...sounds nice, doesn't it?!

We thought about the fact that I love taking photos of dancers while they perform, that's how this whole thing started. Then I thought it would be nice to put a dancer where...it doesn't belong to, meaning outside the dance floor/theater/studio/whatever. Then, since all the dancers we know have different styles, we thought about highlighting the specific character of each one of them and that's how we came up with..."Elements of Dance". Think about four elements: Earth, Fire, Water and Air. Think about four dancers (that kindly volunteered for this): Cesar, Caitlyn, Bradley and Deborah. Four elements, four styles, one goal: perform and express their vision... dancing.

So, on my side, I needed to find a proper location for each one of them. Think about a lighting scheme (because I wanted to experiment some lighting techniques I had been reading about) and finally get the shots!

So far, I must say, I'm pretty satisfied with what we have achieved. Some times I made some mistakes, some other times something didn't work properly, but after all... I like those shots a lot!

On the other side, you are here to tell me what you think, right?
So, let me work a little more about this and then I'll present you the official entries that I will submit to the Pasadena Art Walk committee.

In the next few days I will prepare a new post for each dancer with the two photos I have chosen to submit.

I look forward to hearing your comments!

New stuff coming out...

Just a quick note to let you know that yesterday I went back to the spot overlooking LA and the Dodger Stadium with Bradley. We took some shots that will be part of my personal project of which you will see the results very soon.

Tonight I'm going out with Deborah to take some more photos and then I'm done, I have all of the four elements I need for my project...hopefully!

Then, I wanted to explain my friend Erika from Italy the reason why her photo shot at night in Florence looks green. It's the lamp post in your photo that makes it green. The light emitted by those lamps have a lot of green in it and even though our eyes "filter" it and they appear yellow-ish, in reality they are more green than yellow and your slide film saw that. To compensate for this in your slide you either need to put a filter in front of your lens...or go digital and simply adjust your WB.

Erika, if you need more details about this, just leave me a comment on this blog and I'll try to explain it better.

By the way, Erika, if you send me your best shots, I'll post them on my blog for everybody to see!

Stay tuned, hopefully I'll post my latest shots soon...