Wednesday, June 18, 2008

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...