Monday, December 15, 2008

Dance Photography - My Roots


I have always been interested in Photography. As a kid, I had a number of cameras. I was fortunate enough to receive two nice film SLR cameras about 15 years ago, and that got me back into the art as an adult.


But what got me into the business was Dance. Both of my daughters are dancers. As a "Dance Dad" I proudly took countless photos of them and others at their studios. I honed my "people photography" skills as I went. As they competed more and more, I began informally being the competition team photographer. This grew as I posted thousands of photos on the old "Club Photo" site, and built slide shows for the studio recitals.


From there it eventually grew to me taking the official recital photos. Over the years, I have slowly invested in the gear to allow me to take indoor images with high quality. I'll talk more about my gear later.


After the Dance Studio work established me professionally, I branched out into Seniors, Family and Wedding photography, as well as lots of nonprofit and charity work. I'll always be indebted to Paula Janicki and Judy Rose who trusted me to capture the images of their studio's customers. Without that support I would never have broken into the professional ranks.


Here is a photo of my daughters taken at a recent dance competition. They are very compatible dancers, as you can see by the similarity of their leaps. At most competitions, I struggled getting good indoor shots. Usually, flash photography is prohibited, the room is dark and the dancers are in constant motion That led me to fast lenses (f/2.8) and cameras that have good low-light sensitivity. I usually shoot ISO800-1600 and fix the shutter speed at around 1/100 with wide open f-stop to capture images like this indoors.


So, my trigger was Dance Photography. What's yours? If you're thinking of getting into the business, what niche can you work in to develop your skills and provide good images and services to someone?

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