This is an ideal day for anyone who has an interest in dance photography. You will learn tried and tested methods to help you get the shots you want and you will have the freedom to experiment with new techniques.

To make sure that everyone attending gets the maximum out of the workshop there are only six places available on the day.

You will have the opportunity to create a set of images ideal for use in your portfolio to grab the attention of dancers who you would like to work with in the future.

This is a full day workshop and we will be covering a number of topics including…

• Planning a dance shoot
• Working with professional dancers
• The language of dance
• Lighting techniques for dance
• Camera settings
• Shooting techniques

The workshop will include four hours shooting time where you will be able to practice and refine the techniques learnt while working with professional ballet dancers.

Location

The workshop will take place in a fully equipped and spacious studio in Chesham. There is on site parking and Chesham is on the Metropolitan underground line. Full directions will be supplied at time of booking.

Experience

Although dance photography is a reasonably advanced subject you do not need to be an expert to join the workshop. You should be able to set the basic functions of your camera manually (shutter speed, aperture, ISO, white balance). You should also be able to set your camera into manual focus mode. You will need your own digital SLR to take part in the workshop.

What to bring

You need only bring your camera and standard lens with freshly charged batteries and an empty memory card or two.

Lunch

Lunch will be provided (sandwiches) but if you have any special dietary requirements then please let me know in advance. There are facilities at the studio to make tea and coffee.

Itinerary

10:00 – Arrive at studio, meet and greet, tea and coffee.
10:30 – 12:00 Camera techniques, lighting, working with dancers.
12:00 – 13:00 Shoot prep and lunch break.
13:00 – 17:00 Shoot with experienced ballet dancers.
17:00 – 18:00 Review of your work, roundup of the day and feedback.

Date: Saturday 19th May 2012
Time: 10am to 6pm
Cost: £150 (£50 deposit at time of booking and the remainder payable by 5th May 2012)

Booking

To book your place on the workshop simply send me a message using the contact form here.

1) “Do you do pointe work?” Some dancers do and some don’t. Just because a dancer has classical ballet training does not automatically meant that they will be able to do pointe work.

2) “Do you have any injury I should be aware of?” Dancers tend to know their limits well and will not undertake work that will cause them to aggravate an injury but it’s as well to ask so that you can plan your shoot around the things that the dancer can do rather than those that will cause problems.

3) “What time have you got to leave?” This is another way of saying “Are you working tonight?” Many dancers work in the evenings or at other odd times and you need to make sure your subject is away for their other job on time. Remember that if you say “We will shoot from 1pm-5pm” you may plan to finish shooting at 5pm and then clear up and leave the studio at 6pm where as the dancer might expect to leave at 5pm.

4) “What dance training do you have?” It’s not always appropriate to ask this. Have a look at the dancers profile or web site and you will probably find all you need to know, as most dancers are proud of their training. This is an important question if your potential subject has no dance shots in their portfolio.

5) “What style of dance do you prefer?” It’s no use booking a ballet dancer if you want Flamenco images although many dancers cover more than one style.

The following are more appropriate for TF shoots…

6) “What images do you want?” If you are doing a TF shoot where you will provide images to the dancer you should take particular care to get the right shots. Many dances will be looking for a particular type of work so the images you supply are for real value to them.

7) “Do you know any other dancers who would be interested in a shoot?” Always a good question to ask. If you plan on shooting for more than an hour or two then it’s far more profitable to work with two dancers so they can each take breaks while you continue shooting.

Things to tell the dancer…

Apart from the really obvious stuff about locations and times etc it’s worth letting the person you are working with know a few things.

1) What the floor is like – If you are shooting in a studio does it have a sprung dance floor? A wooden floor? Concrete? If you are outside will you be on grass or is there likely to be loos gravel or rubbish. You don’t want to get to a location and find that the dancer is uncomfortable working on the available flooring.

2) Changing facilities – This obviously depends on the type of shoot but if you are doing a classical ballet shoot then the dancer is going to need somewhere private to change costumes. If you are doing a shoot in a public place you will find a lot of dancers are accomplished at changing under a loose dress or similar. I have even improvised a changing area out of a couple of light stands and two silver “Thermo Blankets”. Changing space is not normally a problem if you plan in advance.

There’s probably half a dozen things I have left out from the above list but hopefully you will get a few ideas to help with booking a dancer for a shoot.

There are basically three different approaches to starting your dance portfolio.

1) Approach some local dance schools and ask if their students would be interested in some photographs. This may work for you but my experience was that, once again, the schools wanted to see a portfolio of your previous work before they would recommend you to their students. Also consider the age range of the students. If the dance school mainly caters for students under 18 then there may well be a requirement that you have a police check before working with the dancers.

2) Pay someone. You are looking for a specialist and it really is worth paying a good dancer to get that first set of shots. Model Mayhem and http://www.dance.net/ are both good places to look. If you are looking on Model Mayhem or similar sites make sure that the model’s portfolio contains images similar to those you want to shoot. Lots of models list “Dance” as one of their working categories but not all of them have dance training.

3) Ask and Look. This is the route I took into dance photography. If I was doing a shoot with a model I would always check their profiles to see if they were trained dancers. I had a couple of good pieces of luck and that got me started.

Amy was one of the first dancers I photographed and that was at a “Stobist Meetup” organised on Flickr. This wasn’t a dance shoot but was a portfolio building day. I had looked at Amy’s Model Mayhem profile and noticed that she worked as a dancer. I didn’t actually work with Amy at the Strobist Meetup but I did get the chance to ask her about a dance shoot at a later date. It took us nearly six months to set up the shoot on a date we could both make, but the results were well worth the effort.

Similarly Lizzie contacted me about a fashion shoot. I would have happily photographed Lizzie anyway but noticing that she was a dancer gave me the opportunity to ask about a dance shoot. I did the fashion shoot with Lizzie and got the edited photos back to her as quickly as I could. We did the dance shoot a couple of weeks later and she even brought a second dancer along to the shoot.

So, although it can be a daunting task, there are several ways you can start work on your dance portfolio and the work you do in those first shoots can lead on to many other opportunities.

I’m going to assume that you have read the previous tutorial on the different ways of converting an image to black and white so will not go into all the details again.

For this example we are going to use a Black & White adjustment layer.

Open up your image and add a black and white adjustment layer as we did in the previous tutorial. From the “Preset” drop down list select the preset that most closely resembles the effect you want to achieve.

This is where the fun begins. In the Black & White adjustment layer dialogue there is a small symbol which looks like a hand with two arrows. This is a adjustment scrubby slider icon. Click the icon and move you cursor over you image.

You can now click and drag on the image to change the settings. Dragging to the left make the selected area darker and dragging to the right makes the area lighter.

I clicked and dragged the area of (what was blue) sky to the left to make it darker and the area around the girls face to the right to make it lighter. You can see the sliders moving as you do this.

Keep adjusting your image until you are happy with the final result.

If you really like the result you have achieved and would like to use it again you can save the preset.

Click the “Fly Out” menu icon in the very top right of the Adjustment dialogue box, it looks like three horizontal lines. You will get a new menu. From the menu select “Save Black & White Preset” and give your new preset a suitable name. Now you can come back and use your new preset time and time again.

Most images converted to Black & White will benefit from adding a little contrast. The best way to do this is by using a Curves Adjustment Layer.

Add a new curves adjustment layer to your image and then start to adjust the contrast. You can do this by directly clicking and dragging the curve but there is also a better way to adjust the contrast.

The Curves Adjustment layer dialogue box has a scrubby slider adjustment icon just like the Black & White Adjustment Layer dialogue.

Click on the scrubby slider icon and then you can click in your image and drag up or down to adjust the brightness of each tonal value. It takes a bit of practice to get the best result with this tool but the time is well spent.

Try not to make any of the light areas in the image darker than the dark areas! This sounds a bit odd but you will understand when you try for yourself.

Small changes are normally better than big so you want to start out easy and make your way up to big changes.

Once you have got a result you like you can save your image or you could go one step further and add some “Film Grain” to complete the effect.

Working with the original RAW file keeps the image quality as high as possible before taking the image into Photoshop for final editing.

I’m also aware that a lot of people use Adobe Lightroom for their initial editing.

Here are two of the presets I have created for some Autumn shots taken in October. The presets are named after the London parks in which the shoot took place. You can always rename the presets to something that s more meaningful to you.

The first is the “Finsbury Park” preset. This gives warm tones with a slight vignette to the image. See the picture of Alice with the vintage camera to the left.

When using the presets it is worth noting that the final result will depend largely on your original image. You are encouraged to play around with the settings to get the result you like.

You should also be aware that lens correction is enabled – you might want to switch this off if your lens is not listed.

The second preset is called “London Fields”. This provides a cooler range of tones. Again this preset will work best wit correctly exposed images with some highlight detail.

You can download the Adobe Camera Raw presets or the Adobe Lightroom Presets to match your workflow.

To install the ACR presets open the zip file and drag the files to Application Support>Adobe>CameraRaw>Settings.

To install the Lightroom presets open an image in the “Develop” window in Lightroom, right click on the “User Settings” tab to the left and go to “Import”. You will have to search for the location you saved the presets and then you can import them.

As you would expect, my photographs are not the same as yours so the results will be different. Experimentation with the settings is the key here.

This is a quick method for producing a fast shading effect in Photoshop. It works well with portraits but could be used for other images too. All the layers are preserved so you can go back and change the settings as you wish.

It’s worth pointing out that I have “overcooked” this for the tutorial. I would normally use less blur and not change the curves so much. The point is that you can choose your own settings to get the result you want.

1) Open your image in Photoshop. You should be able to do this in most versions of Photoshop from CS upwards.

2) Remove any skin blemishes using your favourite technique. There are so many skin retouching methods that there’s not much point going into them all here.

7) Change the curve

In the shadows layer drag the curve down so that you increase the shadow density.

At this point you can go back and edit the curves on the shadows or highlight layers. You can also edit the masks to dodge or burn various parts of the image.

Whilst it’s not easy to get those breathtaking photographs of star clusters  you see in astronomy magazines, and you are not going to out-do the Hubble there are plenty of photographs that are possible with fairly basic equipment.

This photograph of the moon was taken with a very low cost 70-300mm zoom lens. All that was required was a bit of planning and attention to detail.

Here are the steps…

Pick the right time of the month. A full moon or a very thin crescent are both difficult subjects. Try to pick a night where the moon is waxing or waning.

Put your longest lens on the camera. There is a simple rule of thumb here. Every 100mm of focal length gives the moon 1mm on the sensor. So a 300mm lens will give you a 3mm image and a 50mm lens will give you a 0.5mm image on the sensor. It doesn’t matter if you have a full frame or a APS-C camera, this rule always applies.

You want the biggest image you can get so always use your longest lens but even a 50mm stand lens will give you a result.

Attach your camera to a tripod. It doesn’t matter what sort of tripod you have as long as it can hold your camera steady while you set up your shot.

Point the camera at the moon and focus. If you have the option use the “Live View” setting on your camera. You should be able to zoom in and focus accurately, although you might find the image appears to shake a lot. You can take some test images and refocus if necessary.

Set the exposure. The moon is surprisingly bright. Try an exposure of f8, 1/60s at 100ISO to start and make adjustments if necessary.

Set your self timer. You can use a cable release if you have one but if not use the self timer on your camera. The moon isn’t going to move much during the 10 second countdown!

Check you results and try again. Look at the photograph you have just taken on the back of your camera. You will need to zoom in on the image as much as possible to check the sharpness.

If necessary refocus or change the exposure and try again.

Be careful not to get caught up in what you are doing too much and get cold. Even a summers night can be cool and you don’t want to be editing your photographs from your sick bed! Also be careful not to trip over in the dark – It’s always a good idea to have a torch with you.

Once you have taken a photograph you are happy with copy your image to your computer and open up the result in Photoshop.

Look for a map of the moon on the internet and see if you can identify any of the features in your photograph.

You will almost certainly have to add a little contrast and sharpen the image but you have just taken a photograph of something about 240 thousand miles away!

Pick a location on your way home from work. Don’t go off the beaten track, keep to your normal journey so that this won’t become a chore as the winter comes around.

One evening, every week until next summer take a photograph in your chosen location.

Try to find somewhere there is a handy wall or set of railings where you can rest your camera. This is going to come in very handy as the light drops later in the year.

If you can find a scene that includes a road you will get some interesting light trails form the cars as the light level drops.

You can use more or less any camera for this. A digital SLR is great but it is a lot of weight to carry around. If you have a compact (point and shoot) camera make sure you turn off the flash and try taking a photo in a very dark room. Most modern digital compact cameras will take long exposures even if you can’t control the shutter speed yourself.

It’s also a good idea to make sure you know how the self timer works on your camera. Using the self timer can reduce camera shake in long exposures and that’s going to come in very handy as the nights draw in.

What you do with your photographs from this project is up to you. If you find a really interesting spot you might want to create a series of photographs showing the location throughout the year. If you only get one image you are happy with you haven’t spent much time on the project and you can look back through all the photographs and think about what makes some images more interesting than others.

Don’t let the weather, lighting, subject matter or anything else put you off taking photographs.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve gone to bed with a plan of what I am going to photograph the next day, only to wake up and the weather conditions are totally unsuitable.

There’s nothing wrong with planning what you are going to do but don’t let things you can’t change put you off shooting.

If it starts raining shoot some wet pavements, if it’s too sunny find some shade and if your model doesn’t turn up photograph the environment around you.

This happened to me only the other day. A no-show from a model after a group of us had traipsed miles carrying food, water, clothing, makeup and a load of heavy lighting equipment.

You have two options when you are in this situation. You can swear and curse and raise your blood pressure or you can shoot what you can. As it was raining (We had planned to shoot in the rain so we were well prepared) I took some photographs of the forest floor.

In the end I got an image I was really happy with and I wasn’t expecting, so the day ended well and I went home happy.