Dance the college away

We had a brief to photograph the dance students at wakefield college for the brief they had to have a headshot, top half shot and a full body then some of them dancing around doing there moves, I wasn't really looking forward to shooting this because i'm not really into posed people photographs i prefer candid photographs, But when we got the dancers in studio shooting i really loosened up and started the enjoy it, At first it was wierd ordering people about to do stuff because they were really stiff and not loose with me because they had never met me before.

I had to shoot one person from the second year group and two from the first year, I really enjoyed the in studio work but the location shoot didn't really go well for me as i don't know the area so i don't have knowledge of good places in the wakefield city centre area, So i shot in Thornes Park and the images were not up to scratch so i decided to not add them to the chosen photographs.

In studio i decided to use the Mamiya medium format with Phase one back with a 80mm Lens and with the space we had it was abit hard to get the moving photographs in shot with tall students as the space is not large enough to prance about, but the lens is incredible i cannot believe how sharp the images are i think it works well with portraits because the eyes look incredible really sharp!

The studio shoot was excellent i really enjoyed it here is a selection of images.

This was one of the headshots i chose, This shot was incredibly sharp i like the detail in the eyes how the softboxes reflect in the eyes giving a real nice reflection, I think simple lighting works better for headshots and photographs just to show the person.


This shot was with the same type of lighting as the one before, i think it works with the skin tone as the lad was pale so if i turned the lights up too much it would just blow out all his features and skin tone, The only thing i don't like about the image is the tattoo which is the only thing you cannot change in a image.

When in the dance studio with the second year dance student i had a incredible time it was so good messing around with lighting and different types of poses this image was said to be taken by the students tutor, I lit it with a strobe on a tripod coming from the right i cannot belive how good the image came out i edited it in a HDR kinda style and a harsh vingetting i think it works bring out the details in the shoes, tights and the tutu.