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.
Ryan these are absolutely fantastic. Way to go!
Love these!!!!!!! The India Dancer is Beautiful!!!
The Girl that is up in the air, wow Awesome!!!!
Good Job
[…] may remember a while back (May archives) I was asked to shoot a dance performance at Hunter College… the show was produced by Rebecca […]
[…] recall (because I know you’ve all been following the blog meticulously) last year I shot a dance performance at Hunter College for Rebecca Imaizumi… following that I did a photoshoot for Rebecca and then Keith and I shot […]