Portfolio night: Adult Dance Exclusive
One of the fantastic people i have been shooting with over the last year - Amie Whitaker, and i had been bouncing ideas off of each other in terms of what we wanted to shoot together etc, when one day i asked her if she thought that offering her dance students a portfolio night would be a worthwhile project… a few months later, we completed our first portfolio night with all places being sold out!
The majority of the dancers that go to the ‘Adult Dance Exclusive’ are either looking to pursue their dreams and do dance full time or they just love dancing and do the odd gig here and there. Either way they still end up having to show photos of themselves or produce a headshot. So there was the formula of what the event should include.
At the venue i set up 3 areas - one being simple clamshell headshots on a collapsible backdrop, one being a wide black background with gel lighting and the third being a golden yellow/orange paper roll for a stark contrast and variety for the subject.
All the dancers turned up on time and brought a fantastic energy to the room, so we jumped straight into shooting headshots for each of them. This was a great way to make everyone comfortable in the setting and with me. Each subject had around 10mins each for headshots, which gave them a decent gallery of options to choose something they really liked.
The setup here was a CITI300pro in a 65cm beauty dish/octabox over head and then a large Neewer eye lighter reflector below to reduce the harsh shadows and bounce light back into the subject. I opted for the Sony 85mm 1.8 as the lens of choice, due to the compression and the fact it kept the subject head and shoulder in a tight frame in the space i was occupying.
Everyone was super excited about shooting the coloured gel imagery - over the last year or so, i have really enjoyed shooting this style when i have had the chance - this is probably down to the fact i am able to play with the colour hue and overall feel in post. The feedback i have received on my gel work especially has been incredible, so it was something i wanted to offer the dancers regardless in this event.
The setup for this was, a Godox AD200 in a 90cm octabox from above and slightly in front of the subject - this was covered with a blue gel. i then had two AD200’s in small strip boxes from the rear with orange gels. For some reason one of the lights was intermittent and caused a few issues, but nothing that severely affected any image selections.
Lastly, we jumped on the coloured backdrop for some funky poses - the common theme was to either kick or to squat - which looked great! This was the first time shooting on a bright background like this, so although i didn’t achieve a perfect even light spread, i was still happy with the results. I opted to use the Godox AD200 in the 90cm octabox close to the subject and then use a fill light occasionally depending on how the model was posing.
