Small Moments: NYC Dance Photographer!

No no no, that doesn’t mean I dance while I shoot, though if you play good music at your wedding, you might catch me dancing a bit on the sidelines.  What it means is that I was recently hired by Hunter College to shoot a dance recital.  Rebecca Imaizumi produced House of Healing, bringing together different types of dance.  I didn’t know what to expect, other than that they wanted portraits and shots of the recital.  The recital photography required just the right setting of shutter speed to ensure no blurring along with the aperture wide enough to get as much light as possible, while being closed enough to keep everything necessary in focus.  Flash in a situation like that is not only distracting, but will kill the photo.  However, back in the dressing room for the portraits I was able to set up and control my lighting.  The only trick was that I had to adjust the lighting for each subject due to the nature of their poses.  Jumping shots needed broader light setups while the dances with lunges required another.

During the performance I realized I’ve gotten so busy over the past couple of years, growing my business and of course, enjoying time with my wife and two beautiful daughters.  In being a business owner and a relatively new father, I’ve let go of some of the artistic joys in my life (aside from photography).  Japanese dancers took the stage and made me pause to inspect their slow deliberate graceful movements.  The Indian dancer intrigued and entreated with her hands and her eyes.  The Puerto Rican dance (bomba) was very fluid and energetic and finally, the African dancers ventured out and the stage erupted with drums and an amazing energy as they expressed themselves through their movements.  I found myself pressing the shutter of my modern-day digital camera in time with the ancient drum sounds and movements from the stage.  I don’t know when the next time I’ll get a chance to shoot something like this will be, but I can tell you, I look forward to it.

Here are a couple of the images that I captured.

Be well,

-Ryan.

Rebecca Imaizumi produced the show and was one of the Japanese dancers.   Fujima Konishiki and Kaori Ibuki were the other two Japanese dancers.  Alisha Desai performed the dances from India.  Lannette Alvarez along with the Millennium Dance Junior Company performed Bomba, and members of the Millennium Dance Junior Company finished off the show with the African Dance.  Poet c. huffman opened the show.