seniors

My friend Millie is attending the new Austin School for the Performing and Visual Arts. We met last year at our Mini’Lypse in March because she dances with an instructor that I have known since middle school. Anyhow, Millie and I have teamed up a couple of times before on some photo projects. I love working with her because she always brings a ton of energy, passion and excitement. On this shoot, she brought friends, even better.

I wanted to photograph them against the background of their school first, give a historical touch to these photos, because these are the first students attending and graduating from the program. Also, the building has a great north facing wall that would serve as a backdrop to our first round of images. This section provided a get-to-know-you introduction to posing, key lights, and “hold that just a bit longer”!

We attempted next to head to an alleyway, but, we couldn’t find enough parking that was remotely close with 3 girls in ballet clothes, 3 patient mothers and 1 photographer with lighting gear.

So instead, we headed over to some haunts of mine on the East Side. Like the Jeffersons!

The dancers all had red, not quite matching, but red none the less, so I really wanted to utilize this Red and Yellow landing with a hard light from a bare Alien Bee 800. One light, hard edged, hard shadow. Just seemed like a great contrast to these beautiful dancers in graceful poses.

And finally, we headed over to the graffiti wall with a background of the Austin Skyline and the Frost Tower peaking around the corner. I love this wall! This time I put a huge octobox on the Alien Bee, and then had 3 of my batter-powered Canon flashes gelled with different colors to bring out the colors in the graffiti. The graffiti would otherwise drift into dark shadows as the light level fell.

Finally, here is a link to all the photos, the dancers did wonderfully, looking forward to working with each of you again!
–JB