For Linea Recta Media, a Dutch media agency specialised in corporate magazines (amongst other things) commissioned me to do a shoot of a girl who does salsa dancing.
The editor wanted a full length photograph of the girl dancing alone and dancing with a partner, with her face visible (or at least recognisable to the readers of the corporate magazine, in this case One! for Unilever Benelux).
In order to do so we met on a Sunday evening in “La Tentation“, a Brussels centre for dancecourses where we set up for the shoot. During the shoot, the salsa dance was in full swing, with litteraly thens of people dancing the night away.
As it was impossible to obtain the desired images with dancing people around my dancer, we had to move to a corner in the room. Another problem is the fact that you cannot just photograph people and publisch them in a corporate magazine. Should you want to do this, you would need a model release from everybody present in the room, which is practically impossible.
For the shoot I used two Nikon SB900 speedlights with a full CTO color filter, in order to balance for the avaible (warm) light in the room. I also used a long lens (2.8 70-200mm VR ) and shot at high ISO levels in order to capture the ambient light. My settings were ISO 3200, f/5.6 at 1/50sec.
Using the speedlights I was able to sculpture the lights on my model without altering the light on the background. I used two stands to put on my flashlights and angled the at about 30° towards the dancer. The lefthandside speedlight was about 1 stop brighter than the righthandside speedlight (in order to keep depth and dimension in the face).
Anyone for a dance?
