Contemporary Dance Oklahoma 2008

As my obligations as a photographer at OU Student Media drag on, it's been hard trying to keep shooting shows fresh in my mind. It is easy for me to get caught shooting with a certain monotony if I don't either see something really different and unique or try to shoot things that are different and/or unique.

This show was especially important for senior lighting designer David Spirakes, for this show was his capstone project. He designed the whole show, when usually most or all of the school's lighting designers would share the show by designing individual pieces. This was unique for the show as a whole. Since this was his capstone, I knew David's design would be dynamic and interesting, so naturally I was excited to see what he came up with.

What he came up with was impressive. Each piece was interesting and, to the delight of my photographer side, extremely easy to shoot. It was easy in two ways: things were bright and colorful, which is always a good thing when shooting shows and each piece was different enough to translate in pictures, which made for some interesting shooting.

The first two sets are from relating pieces, but the rest are a variety from the different pieces. My last two photos are my absolute favorite and introduce a new technique in theatrical shooting that I will experiment with more. I am EXTREMELY excited about shooting with this technique and cannot wait to try it again. I'll explain more when you get there.

(Caption info to come later)

Ok, so these next two photos come straight out of the Dave Black hat-of-tricks. The technique is to use extremely low shutter speeds to achieve a ghosting effect. There are no sharp pictures here, something that I am entirely foreign to. Anyone who knows me knows that I am a stickler for sharp photos. If it's not sharp, it's not worth it. But, the ghosting technique is all about being dreamy and mysterious, so throw all the sharpness business out the window.

Nikon D200, 125mm, 1/1.3 at f/13, ISO 800, WB 4500, Spot meter, PS CS3 crop and level edit.

The shot requires that you use something ridiculously slow (like a little less than one second in this case) and let the subject move around. In this case, the dancer was spinning and moving her arms which gave a subtle ghosting around her body. Also, the dancers were wearing white, so when she moves around, the shutter captures where her white dress was at the beginning of the shot as well as at the end. This also makes a ghostly lines across the frame.

Nikon D200, 80mm, 1/2.5 at f/9, ISO 250, WB 4500, Spot meter, PS CS3 crop and level edit.

Here, the subject dancers began at the center of the frame when the shutter opened, moved to the right and held her position. This made red streaks appear like they came out of her arms from the darkness. Also, a dancer jumped in front of her during the exposure and created the extra ghostly lines above and below her. If you look closely, you can see the dancers head and part of her body in front of the subject dancer.

Obviously these two photos are just two examples of what you can do with this technique. This is the very first time I've tried it with a theatre assignment partly because I'm usually nervous about trying new things when I'm on assignment. I'm always afraid that I might miss something important because I was farting around and trying new things. I think in this case it worked out. I got plenty of what I need to get, plus played around with something new that sparked my interest. Expect more experimental photos like these in later entries.