dance4life

Simon - Braving the rain at midnight.

I was asked to support a youth "stop AIDS" campaign by Dance4life. They were holding a photography campaign and wanted some photos for promotional material. The brief "A selection of photos to inspire people to think about what 'dance' means to them and how they could use dance to communicate a message" A bit vague, so I just started taking photos to find what would come out of it.

The final Poster

The selection here show some of my efforts. There are three main ideas here and perhaps they'll help show how my thoughts progress during a shoot. The ones of simon where all a similar setup. My trusty umbrella is on the adjacent curb facing back in at 45 degrees. In the first shot you can almost see the flash on the left held by Betty, Simon's wife. You can definitely see the intense glow lighting up the rain. There is a third flash just behind and to the left of the camera with a snoot.

The final e-flyer

This shoot was actually quite amusing, not only because Simon spent the evening jumping in the air, but also because of the rain, because the umbrella kept blowing over and because the inconsiderate traffic kept driving past and although I could have left the camera in the side of the road.... I decide to pick it up every time, which meant checking the focus again and again.
The landscape poster shot had a slightly different setup as Betty was actually standing directly behind Simon (in black) which not only made his white trousers glow more evenly but also gave him a good rim light around his back, arms and head and also picks out the rain quite well. Thanks Simon and Betty for standing in the rain for an hour at midnight on a school night :).

The other setups here weren't used but I quite liked them. The first was a two light set up. A snooted flash to light the hand and ribbon with only a pinhole of light coming out (to get the quick fall off). The back light is a poster delivery tube (with a white end cap) with a flash inside, this gives a lovely diffused light with a graded drop off.
The ribbon in this shot is a lot clearer. Because of the low light level used in the shot I actually ran around in my kitchen in the dark. Which was amusing until I kicked the camera. The "floating/flying" ribbon is actually hanging from the ceiling by fishing wire.

The final one was again a simple two flash setup. I was thinking of a "Wedding dance". A bit old fashioned of me, but they are promoting sexual health rights so I thought I'd try to get a bit of 'love' in their too. There is a fill light from the front a stop down from the main light, which in this shot is bizarrely the rim light behind us.

A small insight to the behind the scenes of this shot. Although I'm wearing a shirt and bow tie, the shirt is not tucked in and I'm wearing jeans! A bit like news readers who only wear clothes on their top half ...