How to take great photos of a ballerina at sunset

I had the wonderful opportunity to photograph ballet dancer Sarah Steward dancing along the shores of Lake Champlain the other day.  After the crazy rain we’ve been having, the skies cleared and a magnificent sunset gave us just the backdrop we were looking for.  The balmy weather quickly changed to strong winds and 38 degree water soaking us, but I think the results are worth the temporary discomfort.

As always, all the photos are available for sale as prints or digital stock here.

The setup for these photos is fairly simple.  The main shot we were looking for was a silhouette of her dancing with Lake Champlain and the Adirondack mountains in the background at sunset.

The main thing about shooting silhouettes is to watch out for lens flare.   It can sometimes look nice to incorporate the lens flare into the shot, but I was looking for a clean silhouette and the less flare the better.

Lens flare is from unwanted light striking the lens glass.  It manifests itself in two basic forms, a haze that can wash out the deep shadows of a silhouette, and dots of rings of light coming from the direction of the light source.  If you’re shooting directly into the sun or another light source, there’s really nothing you can do about it, but if the light is just out of frame, you can shade the lens to reduce the flare.

Using the lens hood is a good place to start. I had my assistant holding a reflector just over the end of my lens to cast a shadow on my lens and cut out the flare.

All of these photos were shot with Nikon’s D2x camera with it’s ISO set to 100.  The D2x may not have the most sensitive sensor, but at 100 ISO it produces some of the smoothest and best files I’ve seen out of any current digital camera.

Nikon D2x, 50mm, f1.8, 1/2500 sec

Nikon D2x, 50mm, f7.1, 1/1250 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f7.1, 1/180 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f5.6, 1/500 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f7.1, 1/500 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f5.6, 1/500 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f5.6, 1/500 sec

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f3.5, 1/100 sec, SB-900, 16″ softbox, radio transmitter

I decided to add a little light to really make things pop.  I was using a Nikon SB-900 with a 16″x16″ softbox, camera left, tightly held by my assistant as the wind was really picking up.  I would have used the Nikon i-TTL, but there was too much light, and the wind was really whipping, so I decided to trigger the flash with a radio transmitter to ensure it would fire each time.  The flash was set to M 1/4 power.

I was trying to balance the ambient light with the flash. I had to keep the shutter speed below 1/160th for the radio transmitters, and wanted the sunset to be darked a bit more than the flashed area to get some real deep colors in the sky and mountains.  The ambient it about 2 stops under normal exposure, and the flash is right on.

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f5, 1/100 sec, SB-900, 16″ softbox, radio transmitter

Nikon D2x, 17-35, f5, 1/100 sec, SB-900, 16″ softbox, radio transmitter

More to come.