Dance Photography | Ballerina on the Roof

I recently met up with my friend and ballerina Laura to fulfill a portrait vision that had been stewing in my head for sometime.  The plan was to have a ballerina in an endless golden field, lit by the setting sun.   While driving to and fro, I found the perfect field not to far from my home and with Laura’s help and a cooperative weather pattern, my vision could be fulfilled.

Of course, I live in Austin, Texas.  To be specific, North Austin.   Here, the weather is unpredictable and generally uncooperative.   Unfortunately, I tend to think that my positive thinking will have some magical effect on how the weather will actually turn out.  Needless to say, the night and morning prior to the scheduled shoot time, the sky opened and released its watery fury down on Austin.

You may have noticed that the images in the post show no signs of a field full of golden grass.  Well, the field of golden grass had been turned into a swamp of golden grass.   Unwilling to subject ourselves to muddy torture (we had sushi plans for after the shoot), we searched for an alternative shooting environment nearby.

It is something I have gotten used to, these backup locations.  Every Austin portrait photographer has or will have experienced the enjoyment of a location falling through and should always be keeping an eye out for last minute scenes for their location photography

We chose the top of a tall parking garage nearby.   Its height made it easy to fill the image with the uninterrupted cloudy sky and we were thankfully a good number of feet away from mud.  The sun was hidden behind a layer of clouds, so we pulled out the strobe lighting equipment and set it up.  Enter the dramatic portrait!

After a bit of shooting and getting to see a beautiful sunset, we packed away the gear and headed down to the base of the parking garage.  Waiting there for us was the wonderful and ever tasty Sushi Zushi.  It was a perfect way to finish up the day.

Many thanks to Laura for being patient with my minuscule amount of ballet knowledge and to Steven and Lindsay for your help and support.