Process: Low Key Dance Photography

Looking for something to do over the Christmas break, I found myself inspired by the work of Richard Calmes on Instagram, who has created some stunning, high contrast images of ballet dancers.

I was interested in seeing if I could emulate a similar style while at home and create dynamic images without a studio setup.

I started off with some feasibility testing. How do I recreate the effect at home? Can I actually pull it off with the lights at my disposal? What settings should I be using? How much can I actually do in camera and how much will I need to change in post?

Enter Angus, an oversize teddy bear who happens to be great at sitting still. With Angus in position and my camera locked off on a miniature tripod, I set about lighting my subject from behind using a desk lamp, adjusting the angle of the light until I was satisfied the subject had a defined, highlighted edge.

For this early test, I was more concerned about understanding the process than mastering it, so I was happy to expose my image relatively normally.

I then dropped the image into Photoshop and played with the levels and framing to produce the following image.

Overall, I was fairly satisfied with the end product and so moved on to a bigger scale.

I drove the car out of my family garage and set up my camera on a tripod against the back wall. I then set up a flood light as a backlight and used the desk lamp as a soft fill light. Due to limitations of space, I had to place my subject about one metre from the garage door which led to some light spillage. The setup can be seen in the image below.

From there, it was about capturing dynamic movement, and picking dramatic poses that kept my subject within the cone of light.

While I wasn't quite able to master the crisp lines of Richard Calmes work, I was fairly happy with my work. I hope to revisit the concept soon with a better lighting set up and use the lessons learned from this experimental shoot to create more stunning images.