In short, the dancers rule. They can really play with light. Most people, in front of the camera, blink, perhaps nervous or uncertain, just letting the light in. Hard light, soft light? The person behind the camera knows best! The picture becomes like a doctor, diagnoses (quietly), and then prescribes. “You have a case of deep eyes, so I would bring an umbrella and a hard square on the shaft that would run about two stops down the main road. Trust me, you will feel better after this treatment.”
“Uh okay, um, uh, what do I do with my hands?”
Dancers don’t do that. First of all, they know exactly what to do with their hands. Also, they fly up and meet the light, and your imagination is, somewhere, out there on the set, in the air, in the space in between. In front of the camera, you give your thoughts and direction, and quietly release the light to them, allowing them to play with it and get creative, throwing it around like kids with balloons.
The amazing dancers of Company 605 sublime, humorous, repulsive, athletic and artistic, all at the same time. I worked with them many years ago and hope to have a return visit this summer. Recently, I used a frame on our Instagram channel and a few people came back with the question. With dancers. Same context. Different lights to play with.
Below that is a simple, directed, hard light. Two flashes across the lane, with improvised barn doors to flag them. You then let the dancers know where the keys should be so their faces stay in the light and their shapes destroy the graphics on the seamless sheet of paper.
From left to right, Josh Martin, Lisa Gelley And Shay Kuebler become wonderful illogical shapes in the air, as if they were popping up like toy jacks with no clear plan in mind.
In the frame below you see the effect of a literal beam of light hitting them, allowing them to play with not only their bodies but also their expressions, jumping as if in response to the news. irrational or potentially dangerous day.
Instead of highlights, here the main light is wide and soft. The main can be a large umbrella or soft box. But it’s the low fill light that rounds out the scene. Place the white foam core on the floor, in front of the camera. Two downward-facing C-holders, each with a flash head pointing directly into the panels, on either side of the camera. Dial the power of this low fill against the main light. Whatever looks and feels good is what you go with. What’s great about this style of lighting? It frees the dancers. Freedom to look up or down, freedom to move and turn, knowing that the light will be there to greet them. The shadow games above are created by two rays of light. The reading of newspapers in the air is represented by large, wide, low and high surfaces.
And the background is bright white. Those lights are behind the dancers, shielded from them and the camera by V-planes, across the white seamless paper and pumping it up +1 to +1.5 stops well above the light. foreground light. The darkness disappears, the brightness rule.
I would never have met the 605 Company dancers without my good friend David Cooper, one of the really great dance photographers working today. His ability to capture the dance, in both powerful and nuanced ways, is uncanny. I learned a lot from him and his work. his book, work contentis a phenomenon.
More tk….
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