The Dancer on Stage

One of the photgraphers on Adorama’s channel has a show called You Keep Shooting. That advice worked rather well when I took Scarlett into the studio with me for a photo shoot that would be used for my Black and White Conversion Challenge. (While the videos are already live on Youtube, the blog post that ties it together has not yet been published) Scarlett tends to be a pretty awesome model for a four year old amateur. She was patient and took direction for about 10 minutes or so. Then she wanted to do her own thing. Mostly that involved jumping and dancing and asking me to photograph her doing it. I zoomed out to get more of her body on the jumps and in doing so ended up with the beauty dish in the frame. While it would be only of a medium difficulty to remove it in Photoshop or GIMP (and trivial to crop it out), I felt that it added to a feel of performance when combined with the red background. The only thing would have made it more perfect for that theme would have been if she’d been wearing a dress or tutu.

By continuing to shoot and indulging her for another ten minutes or so, I was able to capture a great moment of pure joy on her part and an example of a time we worked together to create something.

• Scarlett