February 27th, 2012 
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Tags: ballet, ballet dancer, beauty, Darien CT Portrait Photographer, Fairfield County Photographer
Recently, I had the pleasure of shooting with Kristen, a professional ballet dancer. We worked in the studio, where there were challenges keeping Kristen within the frame, especially when she was jumping and turning. She’s a lovely dancer and I look forward to shooting her in a live performance on the big stage!
Working both in the studio and on location, photographer Blake Robinson serves the Connecticut communities of Darien, New Canaan, Stamford, Norwalk, Westport and Greenwich.
August 2nd, 2011 3 Comments
Add CommentTags: ballet, ballet dancer, beauty, Darien CT Portrait Photographer, Fairfield County Photographer
Recently, I had the pleasure of shooting with Wilhelmina, a young ballet dancer. Her mom assisted as makeup artist, wardrobe stylist and all around photo assistant – Thank you, Cynthia!
The shoot was great fun. We were trying traditional ballet poses, but also some informal, ballerina-at-rest looks, following in the tradition of Degas, as in the image below.
Kevin McKenzie, Artistic Director of The American Ballet Theatre, said, “I think most dancers would agree that the art of ballet chooses the dancer, not the other way around.” I can see how ballet chose Wilhelmina. She is totally committed to improving her skills and begins her college level training later this month.
Many of the images from the shoot were converted to black and white, such as this:
We experimented with a variety of lighting styles. In the image below, I used one fairly harsh direct light. It’s a bit faint in this version for the blog, but I liked the subtle shadow of her arms on the paper behind Wilhelmina.
We took a lot of pictures in this shoot and it was difficult to choose just a few for this blog post. We close with one of my favorites. If you want to see more images from the shoot, here’s the link to my website. Be sure to view these in “slideshow” mode to see the pictures full screen. Thanks, as always, for your interest in my work.
May 26th, 2011 0 Comments
Add CommentTags: beauty, bold colors, dance, dancewear, Darien CT Portrait Photographer, Fairfield County Photographer, fun, glamour, my photo biz
This week, I had the pleasure of photographing dance skirts for my friend, Neeta Maniar. Neeta and a partner in India have a business selling beautiful Indian dance skirts. Their website is Taal Dancewear. The images we shot will go on the website soon. For the shoot, Neeta brought in six models and over 20 skirts – a big production for my modest-sized studio, but somehow everyone fit in!
For each skirt, we shot one full body image, usually in a dance pose, and then one closeup shot of the lovely waist bands. Both images will appear on the website, so Taal Dancewear’s customers can really see the beauty of the skirts.
All of the models are experienced dancers and most had danced together many times.
For the lighting, I had two lights on the white paper background and two lights in front on either side, to provide a fairly soft, low contrast overall lighting setup, which I felt would be appropriate for the website.
I know very little about proper dance poses, so Neeta was just behind me, checking the view from the camera and coaching the models on the poses she wanted.
Neeta and the models could see each image on my laptop as we went along – a big help in getting just the right look.
The shoot was great fun for me and I think for the models as well. I truly hope these images will lead to a big jump in sales for Taal Dancwear!
In a few of the pictures the models hammed it up a bit. Wonder if this one will make it to the website? You can see more images from our shoot here.
