Funnin' Around
Of course, that only encouraged the studio denizens to get silly on me. To good ends, I might add...
In what can only be
considered as an ode to a long-ago decade (you know,
the one I grew up in, the one they were not even
alive for) they hammed it up with all the silliness
they could muster. Still working on the official
picts for the night, but these two struck me as quite
fun.
I was also in the studio to shoot pictures of my
daughter for stock. Got a few hundred exposures and
and my daughter (and model) informed me she wasn't
feeling so good. Time to pack it all up and try again
another time. In looking back at the images, there is
still some great images for the intended target. I'll
be working on those next.
As an aside, I'll be out of town next week, riding
mountain bikes with "da boyz" in southern Utah. Look
forward to big hit bikes, sun (hopefully) and lots of
smiling men enjoying "not work". Here In fact, here I
am, last October "not working".
I'm giddy with anticipation...
Cheers!
More Squares
More Portraits
I shot pictures of the younger girls, then the older dancers. Most of the latter didn't turn out very well, but this one of Meghan (EBT instructor extraordinaire) was quite sublime if I do say so myself.
New Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries
Please peruse the galleries and enjoy. All images are available for purchase vie the options on each image frame.
Other images from the Emerald Ballet Theatre archive are available for viewing/purchasing in the EBT Portfolio page.
EBT Shoot
The last image was
literally the first image shot - just something to
see if the camera was picking up that it was tethered
(it never did, ack). Funny how sometimes something
unexpected turns out beautiful every once in a while.
Viktoria was quite pleased and they've been sent off
to the design firm doing the poster in both black and
white and color.
Client Shoot
The shoot was to create some images for the advertising of an upcoming performance, a new choreographic work entitled Tales from the Mediterranean that will debut in June of this year. The dancers are hard at work on it already and I've been attending rehearsals as my travel schedule permits.
I finally got around to hanging a 12' seamless in the studio - mounted on the walls using the Bogen Expan system - I really liked how easy this was to put up and will make my life so much easier when doing things like this, especially when I'm doing pictures of dancers on point with their arms/legs extended. In the past that has required a certain amount of post-production work on Photoshop to make them fit (seam carving, if you please). Saves all that time putting up/taking down the seamless backdrop supports.
Nice.
I'll be posting those shortly.
New Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries
Creative Choreography
Here are a few images of the two older girls...
On an unrelated note, its my 20 year High School
reunion this summer. 20 years. Wow.
As result, it seems that people have started crawling
out of the woodwork lately. I've never been a big
Facebook person, and remain mostly uninterested in
it, but my range of new-old friends has expanded on
said site. La Tee Da.
March!
Welcome
March. Already.
Yesterday we attended a Russian festival - our
daughter was performing a dance as a showcase for EBT
- the artistic director is from Russia and danced for
the Bolshoi - so her roots are deep in the Russian
community here in Seattle. This was a short
performance, to a Chopin piece, mostly to inspire the
crowd to send their Russian girls/boys to learn to
dance at EBT.
She did a great job. Here is a picture from that
piece...
Here is another EBT dancer doing a more modern
piece...
Wednesday at the Studio
I just found out I'll be traveling again next week. I
had plans to do a studio shoot with Viktoria
(artistic director of EBT) next week, but it looks
like I'll have to postpone it for another week. March
is already jam packed with scheduled shoots, travel
and a mix of other important happenings. Wait, its
March? Wow.
I spent a few hours in the studio yesterday and
captured a few images I'm quite happy with.
Joe McNally
I ran across a post by Joe McNally, a well known
photographer, talks about his affinity for dance
photography.
Read it here
I liked this part here best:
"Put a dancer in front of my lens, and Joe be happy
monkey. I feel a real affinity for dancers, actually,
because, just like photographers, they are hard
working, creative and underpaid."
Dance Photography
Dance is something I got sucked into a few years ago
when my daughter started pirouetting her way across
the marley.
She had been talking about it since she could talk
and she was pretty sure of herself. She spent most of
those early years in a tutu or some form of
ballet-related costume. Here is a picture of her at
her two-year old birthday party, appropriately
garbed.
My wife had danced as a child, and was still doing
so when I met her in 1991. I loved picking her up
after her dance classes, although I was much to silly
to go in and actually watch. It took a few more years
to develop a taste for it myself.
When we moved to
the Seattle area, my wife went off on a quest to find
a studio that could teach our budding dancer. She
didn't want a
rinky-dink dance studio in the
strip mall
- you know the kind that teach ballet, hip hop, jazz,
clogging and every other dance under the sun - all
with the inherent cuteness, but with mediocrity at
the center.
She wanted something more, although the
idea of PNB (the giant gorilla of the area) was a bit
overwhelming. So she stumbled across a small studio
in Bellevue that had an interesting pedigree - a
small studio, very intimate, with an artistic
director who had danced at the Bolshoi (the big
gorilla of the world). It was small, unassuming, and
mostly run by volunteers and people who cared about
dance. And better yet, Viktoria (the artistic
director) was just what we were looking for- someone
with real training and connections that could really
make a difference if Chloe decided dance was for her.
So Chloe started at 4 years of age - on her
birthday no less.
I took pictures of her, here and
there, but never was able to get the access or the
time to do more. As Chloe grew, it became more
important to her. Happily, this little ballet studio
was really focused on performances (even if they
couldn't publicize them very well) and Chloe began
racking up the stage time. And solos. She was in
heaven.
At some point, my wife approached me about
doing a bit more with the studio (she was on the
board of directors by then) and after some
negotiations, I started shooting weekly sessions.
First with my daughter's class and then with the rest
of the classes. It was inspiring, beautiful and
enjoyable. I'm very happy with the results of that
year long project.
You can see this work here:
Well, as you know, things can go awry. Soon after I
stared my project, Viktoria and that little studio
had a schism. Silly stuff really, but it mainly
focused around respect. So she left to form her own
studio. We decided that, while we loved that little
studio, that we really needed to follow Viktoria as
she was able to provide the training Chloe needed. So
we did. And that was the birth of
Emerald Ballet
Theatre.
The new studio has grown over the past year.
I've done a lot of work for them and have enjoyed
myself even more. My work has become an important
part of the studio - from the walls, to the
website, to the posters and advertising. That and
I'm there a fair amount and have gotten to know
many of the dancers. Its great to know these
beautiful girls and see them developing their
talent and at the same time providing a wonderful
little community for my daughter. She loves it and
is up to 8 hours a week. Seriously. We are so
proud of her and her accomplishments.
You can
see the work here:
We still miss the old studio. There was some wonderful people there, and it was a sad day for us to leave, but it was the right decision. EBT is growing and I'm loving the work I do in the dance studio. If you have some time, explore the galleries linked to above. Cheers!
EBT Images
EBT Screensaver Available
I've added a screensaver of EBT images to the
download
page.
Emerald Ballet Theatre - Screensaver 1
This screensaver is Windows only (sorry Mac people - there isn't a good screensaver creation tool for the Mac that I could find - and yes I'm a Mac person) and is about 72 MB in size. The screensaver is shareware - it will show only 5 images until you register it. After registration you'll see a selection of EBT images - for a total of 150 images in all. Many of these images have been on display at EBT, used in the studio's marketing and publicity materials and online in our EBT galleries. Registration is only $10 and will brighten any monitor. All proceeds from your screensaver purchase go directly to EBT. There are options to buy a downloadable copy, or for those who recoil at a 72 MB download, you can purchase a CD version for the same cost (plus a nominal shipping charge). Thanks.
Client Work & Updates for EBT
Spent the morning retouching and printing a series of
pictures for a client, and wanted to share some of
the results here...
I also spent yesterday printing out a grouping of 11x14 images to hang at Emerald Ballet Theatre. This will be my first hanging of color work at the studio - all taken from the two new galleries (galleries 15 and 16 respectively) posted yesterday. Peruse them if you get a chance, and if you are EBT, make sure to take a look at the new prints I'll be hanging today. Cheers!
New Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries
I've posted two new
Emerald Ballet
Theatre
galleries to my portfolio pages.
These two galleries encompass about 60 new images in
total. You'll notice that there are an increasing
number of color images as of late. I've been moving
toward some color interpretations lately - and I've
been enjoying the results.
Please peruse these two galleries and enjoy.
Danced & Infared
Another picture as I sort thru some images shot
before all my traveling adventures...
Sean McCormack (from
Lightroom
News)
has a great article on creating Infrared
photography in Lightroom.
Have a great day.
More from the Studio
Creative Dance
Here are a few of my favorites.
This is a bit of a
different take on a subject I've been working at for
over a year. Like some brown tone with that?
I'm heading to San Jose for a big company shindig
next week - might be a bit more sporadic with the
updates.
Also, I took Chloe to PNB's Romeo et Juliette tonight. It
was gorgeous. Beautiful. Go see it if you live in
the area. Really missed having my camera - there
was so much visually to take in.
New EBT Gallery
Back in the Studio
Here are a couple of pictures of Viktoria - founder and danseuse extraordinaire...
Shoot: Summer Intensive Ad
I took about 30 exposures and came up with a gallery of potential images and sent it off to the decision makers. I love assignments like these that leave it mostly wide open for me to explore. For this shot, I had a chance to bring out my giant Calumet 3-D Reflector and positioned 2 lights shooting right into this massive diffusion unit (one above, one below). I love what this setup can give for shoots like this.
Here are a few out-takes from the past few days. Sometimes the goofy stuff in between the "serious" stuff can be wonderful.
Also, this evening saw me working on a custom book
for a client in-between print sessions - I've had
several orders come in over the past few days (10 or
so prints from the Nutcracker galleries from Emerald Ballet Theatre) as well
as some orders for the audition photos I shot last
Wednesday. A couple of those required some
extensive Photoshop work as I have foolishly been
neglecting the need for a 13' backdrop and tried
to fit things onto a 9' one instead. The
arabesques really just don't fit without some
serious focus on the dancers part (all the while
also trying to nail technique), so needless to
say, I had some stray hands/feet.
Time to pick one up...
Print Orders, Free Adobe Training Videos & More Dance Photos
Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries
There are some wonderful images in these galleries
and I'm glad to see parents/grandparents taking
advantage of this opportunity to have high-quality
archival fine art prints of their young dancers in an
important performance.
Moving along, I found a great resource (linked from
the excellent The Online Photographer blog)
that links to a sizeable gallery of free tutorials
for various Adobe products. I'm glad to see we are
finally putting these together in a single place
and with a comprehensible browser
to find what you are looking for.
Adobe's Design Center Tutorials
Here is an photo I took last night at EBT friday
night...
The new Canon 24-70 L 2.8
lens I purchased is actually working out quite well.
Its sharp and although not quite wide enough (argh,
1.6 crop factor!) its pretty nice. I'm afraid I'll
have to go to primes for the same IQ as my Leica
glass (if even then) but its more than acceptable. I
should really look into putting Leica R glass on this
camera, but I hear things about flakey adapters (and
I loose AF). Primes? No AF? Sounds like my M8...
Audition Photos
Thankfully, Viktoria
(EBT's founder and artistic
director) was working with us to make sure things
were perfect and this one was the last frame shot
in what was a grueling shoot.
I believe the lead up to this particular shot was her
encouraging the dancer to "fly away like a beautiful
bird."
And I believe she did...
Emerald Ballet Theatre Gallery Added
EBT Gallery Update
I've added a gallery page with permanent links to these new galleries on my portfolio page. Click to see them all...
If, for some reason, you
are having trouble seeing the galleries, please make
sure you have a monitor that is capable of a
resolution of at least 1024x768. I've optimized the
galleries for this size of monitor because I've heard
from a few people that they were not seeing the
purchase options at the bottom of the image frame.
If you are still having troubles please feel free to
look at this page for troubleshooting advice
or contact me and we can get you up and
running.
New Emerald Ballet Theatre Galleries Online
There are about 300 images spread across 12 galleries - and the best part is that you can purchase each and everyone directly from the web gallery with Paypal. When you click on the image, you'll find a pop up on the bottom left of the image frame that contains options for various sizes. There are some wonderful images from the past 3 months, including the run up to last week's spectacular Nutcracker performance.
- Gallery 2
- Gallery 3
- Gallery 4
- Gallery 5
- Gallery 6
- Gallery 7
- Gallery 8
- Gallery 9
- Gallery 10
- Gallery 11
- Gallery 12
Note: if you want to order one of these pictures as a Christmas gift, please consider that we have less than 2 weeks until Christmas and processing the order will take at least 1 week. Don't forget to check "Local Pickup" if you want to pick them up at the studio and you'll avoid shipping charges.
Please let me know via email if you are having trouble viewing the galleries...
Nutcracker? Check!
Both performances on Saturday sold out, and the crowds enjoyed an amazing show - especially considering the time frame we had to put it all together. Congrats to the dancers, to EBT's staff, and all the volunteers for pulling it all together. From a new studio opening in September to this is really meteoric. Apart from the traditional dancers, we had a crew of Brasilian Capoeira artists perform as the core of the solider crew, and they did an amazing job of introducing their blend of martial art and dance into the familiar story line. A stroke of genius and I hope it becomes a long partnership.
I was there for both performances, but spent most of my time selling calendars and setting up and prepping for the planned Nutcracker character shoot. We did the traditional "get your picture" with the characters. It was pulled together in short order, but I was pleased with the result. We also managed to get the EBT calendars in time to sell at the show and sold out of the first run by the end of the second performance.
I've still got a few hundred pictures to go thru from the dress rehearsal - Lightroom stands up well to the task - I've cranked 4000 images thru it this week! I also have 2 books on order to put together and shipped off to the printer. So I'm probably in for a few late nights this week...
EBT Nutcracker
Emerald Ballet Theatre's Nutcracker 2007
Emerald Ballet Theatre
Emerald Ballet Theatre
I've been working with Emerald Ballet Theatre since early this summer. Several good friends of ours started this eastside studio/company this year and I'm working with them much as I have done for Ballet Belleuve. Its a real privalege to work with such great dancers, regardless of where they dance.
Please enjoy the galleries.