My recent/current obsession is photos of ballet dancers.  Not posed and standing there on pointe looking pretty, but jumping, moving, -dancing-.  I want to see peoples images of these, and see how many ballet dancers are here.  I don't have any of my own, but I'll get around to making some, eventually.

This guy did a whole book of that:

https://www.modelmayhem.com/member.php?id=54682

See also: Lois Greenfeild.

Here's some dance type stuff:

https://www.modelmayhem.com/posts.php?thread_id=40030

I was a ballet dancer for 11 years! rock on!

One of the models I worked with in my portfolio is a ballerina form Brazil.  My muslin is a little small for jumping and moving too much.  Dance and yoga are all I'm shooting.  My portfolio has some general dance images.  kevin

There is another thread about this on now. I tried to embed my images but it didn't work. Anyway, I have some dance photography on my port right now. I shot 3 calendars for Fresno Ballet and some publicity shoots.

I'm a ballet dancer.  Check out my port for a few images.  I need to get more.

There is a peculiar fact about dance pictures, particularly when you see them  from the point of view of a portrait photographer. Dance movement photographs (with the exception of some well known ones) suffer from the sameness of live rock and roll photographs. Once you realize that peak movement represents no movement, it is relatively easy to capture dancers in mid air. It is only when a shutter lag (of lack of knowledge of it) gets a dancer in mid movement that you get pictures that are not graceful. In Canada one photographer, David Cooper has dance photography sewn up. He has a very large coved studio with a high ceiling. When I started being assigned my arts magazines to shoot dancers and coreographers I realized I had two options:

1. Imitate David Cooper. This was not good since he is so much better at it than I am.

2. Do what I do best which is the portrait. A photograph of a dancer nailing on a wall or in a fashion spread with dancers would somehow show them as dancers.

I have done this now for years and I never bother to do movement dance pictures. Here is one that came close of dancer Cori Caulfield. This shot was inspired by her dance based on the story of Adam and Eve.

And this is my take on the Argentine tango step called the voleo.
Alexwh

This great dancer Sandrine Cassini (she danced for the Paris Opera Ballet and now dances for the Mannheim Ballet) I featured in a piece on dance which follows the photo.
Alexwh


http://www.cbc.ca/arts/features/passiondance/

I really started shooting in college to capture my lighting designs on various dance companies and it just went from there.  I love shooting dancers and gymnasts because they understand the energy inherent in a body.  They can give you tension while seemingly relaxed.  It's like shooting a bullet at the top of it's ballistic trajectory, zero velocity and loads of potential energy...

Most of you might know about Degas's The Little Fourteen-Year-Old Dancer ballerina sculpture. His model was a young girl from the Paris Opera Ballet called Marie Von Goethem. When I found that Ballet BC dancer Sandrine Cassini had danced for the Paris Opera Ballet we did this series representing a grown up Marie van Goethem.
Alexwh

http://i32.photobucket.com/albums/d47/alexwh12/48.jpg