Putting feelers out for another studio day. Thinking about sometime in the next couple weeks. I’ll post a story about this as well, as my posts are only seen by 7% of my following, and one (1) non follower. Someone help me make sense out of Instagram.
I wish Instagram would allow for more aspect ratios in a post. Making sacrificial crops, on low resolution images, in 2025 is lame. Anyways, I’m still trying to post more.
I’m going to make a conscious effort to post more. As disheartening as it has been to watch the photo-sharing app turn into a meme repost platform that is riddled with bot comments, while being plastered with ads; I still carry a camera around every day.. and sharing is the whole point of photography.
These sets have always turned out to be photos I’m proud of. On one hand, the dancers make it pretty darn easy to take interesting photos. On the other, these are shoots with limitations that are very technically challenging.
I could just put two large umbrellas on either side corner facing 45 degrees back at the middle of the backdrop, but who wants boringly lit flat images?
A ton more light, and a ton more physical space to place items would definitely unlock some more creative options, but here’s my thought process and reasons for each decision:
I went with a 105mm lens to draw the background in as much as I could. The backgrounds are Savage brand 9” wide seamless, and for simple standing pictures that’s more than wide enough. But when I have the subject 4-5 feet in front of the background, and they’re jumping to full extension splits, space gets taken up in a hurry. Sure I could theoretically edit the backdrop wider in post, but I’d rather get myself as close in camera as possible.
Lighting presented a lot of challenges as well. “Simple” two light setup, with two V flats pulling their weight. Key light with an aperture parabolic diffuser, and a rim light with a gridded small Octabox from the opposing corner. The difficulties come into play when some poses are jumping, some are laying in the ground, some facing opposite of the key light, and lots of movement. With some more space I would just abuse the square inverse law and light them from further away to give myself some more margin, but with the limited space of a living room V flats as a bounce made this possible.
Editing and color grading choices were made to make different skin tones and poses look at uniform as possible.