Many times I go into a shoot with several sketches of what I want, but some of my favorite images that the dancers and I create are the ones where we simply try a concept that I have in mind and let the dancer's body speak. This image above and below are possibly some of my favorite dance photos.
How did we make it?
For the images above, I shared with Kayla that I have this vision of catching her mid-flight.
What kind of position to do, I left up to her. Once we tried a few poses we went with the ones that spoke to me. I laid down on the ground, pointing the camera upward toward her. She stood on a cushion & up she went, and snapped I did. We used my digital camera for this shot to allow for necessary retakes. If your dancer does not have too much experience with jumps I would recommend a much larger cushion. The tiny cushion is what we had, and my dancer was comfortable jumping off and onto it. As a natural light shooter, we used the light that was coming in from the left, as you can see.
One more thing that really contributed to being able to shoot such personally satisfying photos is our match in energy. Many times you get people you can shoot well with, but on luckier days you have energies that work so harmoniously together. Our match in energy definitely helped to create those shots.
The following below: Film shots, on the Pentax 645, Portra 400.
There is a magnificence behind the body.
One body can do so much. It can cause pain, it can bring joy. It can express so many various emotions without the mouth opening once. For me, the movements of a body communicates far more strongly than the words that come out of a mouth. Being raised in a culture where you are to read behind people's words, I've come to listen and watch for things beyond the words that people say. Today things have changed but I still value that aspect of communication. Personally, I would rather express visually to communicate something rather than try to find the words.
Love shooting dancers.
Cheers,
Masumi