Winter Showcase: Solos | Dance Photographer

In the 2016 Loudoun School of Ballet's Jazz Company Winter Showcase, there were three solo performances by members of the company. I wanted to capture the beauty of these soloists!

Dancer #1: Miss MK

Loudoun School of Ballet Winter Showcase | Dance Photographer

In February, I photographed the Jazz & Co Winter Showcase, once again at Franklin Park Arts Center. After my first time photographing there, I was a bit more prepared for the smaller stage and different lighting techniques. I also didn't have the technical issues I encountered the first time, so overall was much happier with the photos. The girls did a fantastic job, repeating a few of the performances ("Mother", "Escapade", "Crystals"), but adding many more to the show than in the fall performance. This performance was extra special to me because my daughter performed in it, with the Showkids performing group.

This time I present the photographs in show order, instead of by performing group as I did last time. Solos will be in a post after this, as it was so difficult to choose a favorite shot.
First Company: All That Jazz

WCDE Workshop | Dance Photographer

I went the entire summer without posting anything here! I thought at first it was because I simply hadn't taken many photos that I want to showcase here, but it turns out that really isn't true. So, it's time to get through my backlog of dance photos and family portrait sessions from 2016!

First up, photos I shot at the WCDE Workshop in February 2016. My daughter participated in the workshops during the day, and then her, her friends, and all of us moms stayed around to watch the competition. The primary dance company from Loudoun School of Ballet was competing, and from my spot near the back of the room, I was able to take a few shots that the instructors and students really liked. The lighting was incredible, which helped to make these photos really pop.

Their first dance was "Seize the Day" from Newsies.

Jazz & CO Fall Performance | Dance Photographer

I've blogged recently about the dance recitals I photographed last year. Because of that work, I was asked to photograph ALL of the Loudoun School of Ballet performances this year - so exciting! In addition to the recitals, this also includes a couple of smaller performances; the first of these for 2015-2016 was the Jazz & Co Fall Performance at the Franklin Park Arts Center. This was a very different type of performance than the recitals - all contemporary style, and only the Jazz & Co performance groups, so really the best of the best at the school.

This was a very different venue - I had previously only photographed the dancers on the larger high school auditorium stage. The Franklin Park Arts Center is a fantastic venue, but for photography it's a bit different. I was shooting from above, the stage is smaller, and the lights are not constant throughout the entire performance (they change depending upon the dance). So, a bit of a challenge for me! I did think ahead and bring two cameras with me, which turned out to be a good thing, when my main camera had some technical difficulties about half way through dress rehearsal. Because of that, some of the dances were not captured as I wanted, and some photos were nowhere near my usual quality. I'm taking this as a lesson learned, and I did much better at the next show (photos of that soon).

First up: the solos!
Arcadia

 Fever

 Cell Block Tango

Miss Lauren - dance portraits | Dance Photographer

A couple of months ago I was commissioned to take some dance portraits of one of the Interns at the LSoB. Miss Lauren, as our kids call her, has helped out in classes for both of my kids, and is such a beautiful and talented young lady. I was very excited when she reached out to me to take some posed dance portraits for auditions she had coming up. Lauren and her mother came to my home to pose in my studio, and we ran through the poses she needed. This first one couldn't be use for her audition photos, but I really liked it, enough to show it here!

Contemporary Dance Recital 2015 | Dance Photographer

While this was the first recital I photographed during recital week in June 2015, it ended up being the last one that I posted here! I love photographing the beautiful ballerinas, and the adorable little ones, but for pure dance enjoyment, the Contemporary recital is definitely my favorite. I love the styles - modern, jazz, lyrical, tap - and the fact that the girls get to have a bit more freedom of expression and movement than you typically see with ballet. With that said, let's get to my favorite photo from each class!

Jazz I

Yes, they are Minions! With my little dancer second from the left, in the front.

Rising Stars Dance Recital 2015 | Dance Photographer

The second of three dance recitals last June was certainly the most adorable: the Rising Stars! These are all the kids ages 7 and under at the Loudoun School of Ballet. The have two recitals per year, winter and spring. I previously photographed the winter recital (in fact, that was how all of this dance photography started!), and was very excited to photograph them again. After photographing the older dancers, I realized how much easier the little ones are - they don't move around nearly as much, and there are far fewer dancers per class!

There were a total of 15 classes plus 2 Intern dances for the theme of "Cinderella". As I did in my previous post of the Ballet recital, I'll post my favorite photo from each class here.

Rising Stars Interns: Ballet opener

I love the way that these blue skirts twirl!

Rising Stars Interns: Closer

Solo Dance Portraits | Dance Photographer

When creating my previous post (and a couple of upcoming ones!), I kept coming across photos that are much more portraits - solo, duo, or a few dancers together. They're not quite representative of the class as a whole, which is why I didn't want to feature them in the posts I'm doing about each recital. Instead, I will share them here, with each photo getting to stand on its own.

Ballet Dance Recital 2015 | Dance Photographer

As all of you who follow me on Facebook know, I spent much of my time in June and July finishing the action/stage photos from the Loudoun School of Ballet's spring dance recitals. This was a huge undertaking - I ended the dress rehearsals with over 4,000 photos, spread over about 50 different classes. It took me the better part of a week to just organize everything! And at that point it was edit, edit, edit. I could not have been happier with the results, and am so thankful to the parents who chose to purchase from me.

I of course cannot post all of my favorite photos here - there are just way too many! So I thought in order to provide everyone with a sampling of the style of stage dance photography I do, I'd post my favorite shot from each class. Even narrowing it down this far is a little bit difficult, but I think I've managed to highlight the best ones. I also took posed "class photos" at the end of each dance, but the action shots are so much more interesting, I think!

The school has graded levels of ballet classes - in this recital were levels II - X. I have a soft spot for Ballet II since it was my daughter's class!
Ballet II

Georgetown, Washington DC | Photography Lesson

As anyone with a craft/passion should do, it's important to periodically take classes to improve one's skills in that area. I really enjoy taking photography lessons, whether it be informally with fellow photographers, sharing tips, or in a class that I have paid for. While a lot of my lessons recently have focused on photographing people, which is really what I've focused on, I have taken other lessons in other areas. A while back, I took a class in Washington, DC where we walked through Georgetown at dusk. The class focused primarily on how to adjust things like white balance in camera, not in post editing, to get different "emotions" in the photos, as well as some tricks for evening/low light photography. It was definitely fun to work on adjusting the mood of the photo while shooting, instead of during editing as I usually do! For all of the comparison shots below, I did not do any editing in post; it was all done on camera.

Rising Stars Interns | Dance Photographer

In January, I had the opportunity to photograph a large number of dancers at my children's dance school. Through a series of unforeseen circumstances, the photographer who had been hired to do the action photography on stage ended up leaving during the dress rehearsal, so I was asked to step in at the last minute. I wasn't fully prepared, but did have my favorite lenses on me, and so I think I was able to capture the dancers as requested! I don't really want to post the photos I took of the little ones here, so instead I will focus on the high school age Interns, who dance with the little kids on stage. In addition to helping out the young ones, they also do their own opening and closing number. These girls are beautiful dancers and very sweet with the little kids, so I was glad to have the opportunity to get to capture them dancing!

Disney's Frozen on Ice

In October 2014 I took my family to see Disney's Frozen on Ice. I've previously taken them to see Disney's Celebration  and Disney's Princess Stories; of all three shows, I think we all agreed that this was our favorite. We had excellent seats, and with my 75-300mm telephoto lens, I was able to capture some beautiful moments!

Christmas Decorations 2014

Last year I posted up quite a few Christmas-related photos, including bokeh, portraits, ornaments, and lights. This year, I didn't take quite as many photos of these holiday-related items this year, but I did spend some time during the week before Christmas practicing a couple of techniques. The first was something that I saw on a photography site and thought I'd give a try. 

With this first one, the idea is to start zoomed in on the object, and during a long exposure s-l-o-w-l-y zoom out to the maximum distance. That creates this cool light trail effect!

Leesburg, VA| Architecture Photography

This month I am participating in a new 30 day photo challenge. I'm not going to post every single  photo throughout the month (I'm planning on a summary at the end of the month instead), but I do want to post my favorites that result from any shoot that I do. Day 4's topic was "Architecture" and I had the idea to take some nighttime photos in downtown Leesburg. Here are my favorite few from the shoot.

Day and night in the Magic Kingdom: Part 2

On our second day at Disney in October, we spent a full day at the Magic Kingdom, which meant we got to spend a lot more time covering all areas of the park. Here are some of the highlights of what we saw throughout. We once again started at the front of the park; while we were waiting to meet Minnie Mouse, I grabbed this photo of some of the Halloween scarecrows. How gorgeous are these colors?!

Lego Castle

A couple of months ago I received an interesting request from my boss: a photo shoot not for a person but for a still-life session. What was the subject? A 4-foot tall Lego castle!

Fireworks July 2014

Unlike the past three years, where my family just set off some small fireworks ourselves, this year I went to the beach to watch the town fireworks get set off with my daughter. Prior to those fireworks starting, some other viewers on the beach were setting off some of their own. Before it was fully dark, I was able to do some long-exposure shots (camera on my tripod) and obtained these first few photos. For those who care, here are  the settings that I used: iso 640, f/22, 3.2s

Sweet Justice Concert: Petersburg, VA

About six weeks ago I once again had the pleasure to see the Richmond-based band Sweet Justice. Previously I posted some photos I had taken of them at my sister's boyfriend's house, which was an outdoor event. Because that was done on his backyard stage, there was not a full lighting rig set up, just what he has at his house. This time, they played at a roadhouse near Petersburg, VA, on my sister's birthday. It was a great night, but to my photographer's eye, the best part was the lighting! It led to some really fantastic shots.

Foreground Bokeh

One day of the 30 day photography challenge in January was "bokeh". I've previously published here examples of the bokeh shots I did over Christmas, as Christmas lights make such a great background for beautiful blurred lights. Since I had recently done that type of shot, I wanted to try something different for this challenge and to experiment with foreground bokeh. In this scenario, the subject is behind the lights, but you still want to try for the nice blurred effect. I discovered that it's a lot harder to do than the more traditional bokeh, and I may not have used the most ideal light source for my bokeh, but at the end I was pleased with a few of the shots that I got. 

Light "Painting"

As you've likely seen on Facebook, I'm taking part in a 30 day photo "challenge" - there's no winner or loser, but it's a challenge to take a photo a day for 30 days, with each day having a different theme. So far, I've managed to keep up with the first 8 days and submit a photo taken that day. 

3 days ago, the challenge was "A view from above". I didn't know what I would shoot, and then when I was standing in the hallway of our second floor, looking down into the foyer, I had an idea to shoot my daughter from above. Originally I was going to do a more traditional shot (well lit, her posing, etc), but then when she started playing with her flashlight, I got an idea. And thus, my shot was born!