This senior ballet portrait session took a long time to prepare for. Because of my client’s busy schedule, we had to wait a few weeks to find a date that would work. And of course, she had to learn to dance first. She’s been studying dance since she was in fourth grade. Which is about when I started really studying photographic lighting. So you could say that this session took us at least eight years to prepare for.

For the seated poses, the floor was surrounded by flashes covered with colored gels, light stands, soft boxes, strip boxes, and a snoot. The snoot is a cone over the flash to limit the light from the flash to just one small circle, which we put on her face. Everything in shadow could be lit by the colored lights.

Here is the result:

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And yes, she can dance, too. You already saw some of her moves in the sunflower field, but you haven’t seen her on her toes.

For these images, we put the main light in a soft box with a grid, just a little above her head. We still had colored accent lights, but the soft boxes came off, because I had them on the floor pointing up, and their hard shadows were cast on the ceiling.

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My son and a photographer friend helped to test the lighting and throw fabric. The scene was pretty hilarious, as my friend was dressed up as a hillbilly for a youth group event. The overalls were a nice contrast to the tutu and chiffon. Actually, most of the behind-the-scenes stuff was pretty funny, as my senior ballerina doesn’t take herself all that seriously. For instance, she requested that we montage one of her outtakes with a Port-a-Potty, if we were unable to find the actual facility at the park.

By this time, we were an hour into the session, and we STILL didn’t have a yearbook head shot. So we moved on to our next location, which will be the topic of my next post.