Before the holidays, I had the chance to shoot a Contemporary movement class taught by choreographer Jennifer Archibald at Dance New Amsterdam. I’ve shot her Hip-Hop class before and was familiar with the challenges: she pushes her dancers to move fast and fluid, and the DNA studios are cavernous and dim. Oh, and Archibald likes to keep the lights off while she teaches. From a photographer’s standpoint: great, just great.
This time, I didn’t even try to make the dark, cave-like environment work for me – the results would be grainy (because of a high ISO), blurry (because the ISO wasn’t high enough, and the shutter speed too slow), and flat (because I was worrying more about my settings than getting in the flow). Instead, I brought my Strobist-inspired off-camera flash, an omni-bounce diffusor, a light stand, and my wireless triggers, and experimented.
I had a look in mind – peak moments in a sequence of movement, frozen by the harsh strobe, that were a little washed out and visually aggressive. It took me an hour of shooting before I started to get the hang of it and began thinking outside the box. I tried putting the strobe on the floor, in front of, behind, and to the side of the dancers, and even using it on-camera – anything to get interesting results. To my child-like delight, I discovered I could get big, puppet-style shadows by placing the strobe at a certain angle and then shooting the dancer in the foreground.
The second idea I wanted to try was working in the dark. I pushed the ISO to 3200+ and shot at a moderate shutter speed – guaranteed to give me both grainy and blurry images. In black and white, however, they have the look of a cropped film negative. There is a certain drama to them that I like – dark and not very contrasty, as if they were deteriorating.
As usual, I have Jennifer Archibald to thank for some kick-ass choreography and the dancers for putting up with my annoying strobe. I’m looking forward to explore these two approaches more in the studio.
