Portraiture is my favourite type of photography, but my absolute favourite-est types of portraits are promotional shots for performers – dancers, acrobats, circus folk – general ‘show biz’ kind of stuff.

I had the great fortune to do a hugely fun dance shoot recently with Jess – she works as an event organiser but her alto ego is a crazy hepcat swing dancer, teacher and performer.

Jess wanted professional promotional images of herself in a dance context to use for a variety of promo, advertising and dance-related applications. Because swing is generally a partnered dance, she asked her dance partner Pete to come in on the shoot. I set up a white seamless environment and some studio lights and then had Jess and Pete do their thing.

Shooting these kinds of promo shots means treading a fine line between ‘dancing’ and ‘posing’ – if you have someone just ‘dance’ in front of the camera, often it’s hard to get a solid, well composed shot and things can end up looking quite random. On the other hand, if you try to do all the shots in a static, posed sort of way they lack energy.

Here’s the thing - dance is a 4-dimensional art form because a dancer moves through both space AND time. What looks amazing in a performance often looks less impressive in a still shot, because certain ‘moves’ look great in terms of their shape and trajectory through time, which, of course, isn’t captured in a still photo.

A balance can be struck by shooting getting the dancer(s) to do a certain move a few times while shooting, then review the image and evaluate it for composition and visual impact. Often little details like hand and arm position, angles of shoulders, legs, etc. can be improved to make the photo cleaner and have more energy and pizazz.

For a lot of the shots we’d shoot one or two, then I’d review the images with Jess and Pete so they could see the result and understand what changes needed to be made physically in order to improve the still image – e.g. “next time kick your leg a little higher” or “sweep your arm away a little more, palm facing camera” etc. Honing in on little details – including facial expressions – makes a HUGE difference to the end result.

In the end we achieved a nice range of photos – some more ‘posed’ promo shots, others more dynamic. Because the shots were to promote Jess specifically, in a number of them I used particular angles to give Jess more prominence in the images, while still retaining the spirit of the dance partnership.  Sometimes I’d ask Pete to look at Jess while Jess looked at camera - emphasizing Jess as the main ‘focal point’ for the viewer.

In the above picture it was about nailing little details like having Jess’s heels lifted off the floor and getting Pete’s right hand position exactly right to add a dynamic energy to the image. And I couldn’t have asked for better facial expressions from either of them!

You can see that Jess has a certain exurberance and enthusiasm that comes across – and that’s just what she’s like in person.

Here are the rest of the finished shots, clearcut to white but retaining some natural shadows for depth. Overall it’s a clean, highly professional look – great for websites, promo flyers, etc.

This just in – now you can watch a cool behind-the-scenes video of the actual photo shoot. Grap a coffee and have a look.

About the Author

I'm a freelance photographer in Christchurch, New Zealand who does promotional & editorial portraiture, and commercial & advertising photography.