From a window display inside the China World Mall, the first of many upscale malls which now can be found around Beijing.
Although this was just a quick snap with the back camera of my iPhone 6, I spent a lot of time developing it with Lightroom, including removing reflections from the display glass and those pesky wires holding the tutu in place. (If I knew how to use Photoshop, I might’ve also removed the pedestal.)
Over the past five days that I’ve been posting these photographs of Rush, I’ve also been developing some prints (using Lightroom) that I thought could be okay with a bit of work.
In all five shots, I’ve paid particular attention to the shadows cast by the dancers (thanks to Sue for the suggestion). I also spent a lot of time using the improved spot removal tool to clean-up the background, as well as removing marks from the dance floor, backdrop wrinkles, etc.
The second image is a stitch (via Photoshop) of three photographs. On the final shot, I used the Infrared Lightroom B&W Filter Preset, which I think worked remarkably well with the original bright blue background.
All 25 photographs are now available on flickr.
Please do let me know if you have any questions or comments. 🙂
No, the soft focus on the first shot wasn’t intentional. I do hope it works, however.
I really like the lines of her toe wrapping into his shoulder in the third shot.
I think that the fourth shot is one of my better dance photographs.
Tonight, Shanshan and I went to see the students perform in the main theater of the Beijing Dance Academy. There was a modern piece, followed by Company B (with some returnees from when I photographed it), with Rush as the finale.
After the performance, I was able to briefly show the photographs to Christopher, Feng, and Christopher, who said they liked the shots a lot. I’ll also be sending Feng high resolution jpegs so that he can give the images to the students.
I do like that I was able to capture these images during a rehearsal… that is, not having the dancers posed or using anything but available light.
Technical specifications are the same as with Rush 1. 🙂
I took the two pictures that are blended together to compose this shot during the fifth rehearsal of Company B (see here) I attended.
Since I’d already had quite a lot of photographs from the previous rehearsals (including the dress rehearsal earlier in the day), I was more creative with the shots… looking at different lighting, reflections, and so forth.
I was lucky that the dancer maintained the same pose throughout, and even luckier that I was able to capture the ballerina in roughly the same pose as she moved around him.
This is my third and final set of shots taken from last Friday’s performance at the Beijing Dance Academy.
And, also, my final set of photographs from my time watching Company B develop there. It was a truly wonderful experience.
I was lucky enough to shoot from the wings during the performance last Friday night. I was able to get fairly good shots from three of the performances.
I’m dividing the shots into three posts; one for each set of pictures.
These photographs are from a rehearsal that happened last Wednesday morning. It was supposed to be a dress rehearsal, but not all of the costumes were ready.
The photographs were shot exclusively with my D300 and 50 mm/1.4.
