I have seen several long exposure photos of dancers in the studio lately. They fascinated me with their ghostly shapes, and fluid movement. But I always found that something was missing it needed a bit of a kick. My concept was simple to add light painting into the dancers movements.
Luckily social networks allow ideas to come together, both of my associates for this shoot are people that I may have never meet otherwise. I have spoken with Piotr from B.I.K Performances a few times about different projects, but this was the first time our calendars matched. He basically danced 2 hours straight so a special thank you for such a great job. Like every Monday I shoot with another local photographer, my original guest had to work longer but Micha was able to drop what he was doing and join the shoot.
This was far from a standard studio shoot (the catch phrases for this shoot should be Abstract, Symmetrical, Flowing, Contrast etc), we wanted to capture the essence of movement. The first step was only to have a very low level of constant light in the studio (any one who has been in the studio with me will know how much I love flash) . This would allow long exposure times at an aperture some where around f8 to f11. The light needed to be enough to highlight the movement of Piotr but drown out the various light sources he was using for the light painting. As light-sources for the light painting we used a variety of resources, glow sticks, led lamps and cell phones. As music I chose mix of Café del Mar to help set the right atmosphere.
Please check out Piotr projects either of face book or his blog (both in German)
https://www.facebook.com/BikPerformance
http://bikperformance.wordpress.com/
For the lighting set up I simply mounted a ring light inside a 180cm parabolic umbrella way down at the back of the studio and then pointed it at about 45° angle to the roof, this way the studio was filled with a balanced low level of constant light. Something i normally try to avoid:)
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