These are my favorite photos from the CVHS spring dance concert. They have some seriously talented dancers.

The concert took place a month ago. This post is late, but I still wanted to talk about it. In keeping with the tradition that we set, we did a photoshoot specifically for the dance concert poster. I had been to this particular place before, but hadn’t ventured very far into this tunnel. I happend to be out there a few days before this shoot and found  part of it with openings in the ceiling. I loved the light. I chose this location specifically for the lighting.

The day of the shoot, we arrived at the tunnel and found that there was water running through it. In all of my previous visits, it had been dry. We decided to go in anyway. There were six of us total and we all got wet and it wasn’t exactly warm. They were all troopers and braved the wet and cold. I was wearing a jacket. The dancers were in these dresses and had no shoes on. I think it took a while for them to thaw out after the shoot.

I love the results of this shoot. It was hard trying to decide which one to use for the poster. We finally settled on the first one (above).

You have to admire the hard work that these dancers put into these ballets. Cedar City Junior Ballet is a great asset to our city. It is open for anyone in the community to participate. They perform twice a year and rehears for months in preparation for two performance nights.

One of the things I admire about Cedar City is the cultural opportunities available to us despite our size. We are a pretty culturally rich city. That combination of size and cultural diversity is a major reason I live here. As a parent, I want my kids to appreciate and love the arts and I take every opportunity I can to expose them to new cultural experiences. This ballet is a good example. My wife has been involved for many years now. This spring is the first time my son was involved. His role was small, but what a great experience for him.

The rest of the photos from the ballet can be found here.

I photographed the concert as usual. Here are a few of my favorite images.

On a technical note. This is my first concert shooting with a full-frame camera. Also a first is the 24mm f/1.4 lens. That combo (full-frame + 24 f/1.4) is a dream come true for this kind of photography.

This is the poster we came up with for the winter concert. I love the tradition we have going of doing a photoshoot specifically for the poster each concert. It is fun and challenging. We shot this last Saturday and made the poster on Sunday and printed it on Monday.

For those of you that care, I’ll go into a little detail about the shoot. See below.

The Shoot

We did this the proper way. On white seamless paper to get the pure white background. There was no need to extract them from the background with Photoshop because the background is pure white. Also notice the subtle reflection/shadow beneath the dancers. Without that, they would look like they were just floating. The reflection grounds them, makes it seem realistic. That was done in camera, meaning it wasn’t Photoshoped in. I didn’t have a perfect vision of what the final poster would look like during the photoshoot. Or after it for that matter. I knew I wanted flowing fabric and flipping hair. My direction to the dancers was “do some jumpy stuff.” My  wife is the artistic director for all of this, so ultimately she gives the dancers the directions. I will tweak what they are doing if things aren’t looking right to me like move a little to the left or right, arch your back more, keep your wrists straight, etc. Then it is all a matter of coordination, timing, and knowing when to push the shutter release.

There are three lights. Two pointed at the white seamless to turn it pure white and the main light. The main light was a silver reflective umbrella backed up pretty far away from the dancers to spread the light as much as possible. That also meant it had to be firing at full power. We only had 30 minutes to work with and we got it done.

The poster is made up of two images. The two dancers together is one image, not a composite. The faded image is a crop of one photo.

Here is the image of the two dancers on its own.

The second image. I really liked the curvature of the dress and the position of the right hand and left foot. That dictated the cropped position in the upper right portion of the poster.

I forgot to mention, my wife made the costume that Heather is wearing. The costume was for a dance called “Boing,” choreographed by my wife as well. The costumes, well, they were designed to “boing.” That hoop in the dress totally bounces around and looks really stinkin’ cool.

Another note, be prepared for a barrage of blog posts related to this concert. There will likely be a few more:)