Dance Photography, Punta Gorda, Fl.

I love to photograph dancers! They are so elegant and classy whereas I have two left feet! I have seen some studio dance portraits taken with a dark background and while the dancer is moving they throw flour or white chalk powder. I was enamored with how the dancer is frozen in a pose but you can see the movement of how they got into that position through the powder in the air. I decided I wanted to give this idea a go but with a couple of differences. First of all I didn’t want to be sweeping up flour for the next month so I chose to go with an outdoor session. Also I thought that with being outdoors the white powder may not show up too well so instead I went with different colored chalk powders. Now I just needed to find a dancer who was willing to get covered in dust.

Samantha sent me some photographs of herself dancing and it was immediately easy to see how talented she is. She has been dancing for 13 years and the styles that she dances are contemporary, ballet, jazz, tap, modern, musical theatre, and pointe. I only wanted to show one dance style in the session so I asked her to dance contemporary, we worked out the details for the session and made it happen.

I chose to shoot at Ponce De Leon Park in Punta Gorda because there are several different awesome backgrounds in one small area. I asked Samantha to create some dance poses without the chalk first so that if some reason the chalk did not come out as I had planned I would still have some beautiful shots of her. I wanted to photograph Samantha on the beach area so that the water would be behind her. I had thought that the sun would also be behind her and then I could use my lights to expose her face correctly but when we got there I realized that the sun was actually behind me. I don’t usually like to photograph in direct sunlight because of the harsh shadows it creates and I will normally move around until we can get out of it but I decided to have a go and see how it came out. It turns out I actually loved the shadows that were created on the ground because they showed the pose exactly! It also meant that I didn’t need to use my lighting equipment which would have been a little tricky because of the amount of movement that Samantha would be doing.

We tried to throw the chalk powder with the ocean behind her but it was quite difficult to see so we moved to a darker background. This worked out much better as it was easier to see the chalk so it showed her movements better. I am so pleased with how the images came out. Take a look for yourself and don’t forget to leave a comment telling us what you think!

To book your session you can contact me here.

And my favorite from the session…it has to be this one. It was tough to catch because she started out facing the other way and flipped over on her hand to face me. Love it!

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