USC Repertory Dance Company!

I can’t think of a better shoot to be the first blog post than this weekend’s shoot with USC Repertory Dance Company (RDC). It was actually this shoot this that finally made me push myself to finally start this blog!  USC RDC is the USC School of Theater’s official dance company, is student-managed, and uses student choreographers (source: their facebook page). 

Unpublished test shot

I have been a fan of RDC since my freshman year of college, in 2004, and have attended almost every show since then. In Spring of 2009 (the same semester I started doing photography), Josh, one of my fraternity brothers who was in the company, asked if I could shoot their semi-dress rehearsal for some early promotional uses. Needless to say I was super stoked and totally willing to help out. In Fall of 2009, I shot the actual show and I have been shooting their once-a-semester dance shows ever since. However, this was the first time I was able to shoot their promotional photos to be used for posters, flyers and the program.

Enough background info (there was enough of that yesterday); on to some photos!

The location for the shoot was USC’s Physical Education Building, where they hold many of their practices and also where I first shot them back in 2009.

The setup for our shoot - USC's PED 207

Here is the three-light setup I was using, as well as an overview of the room.  There are massive windows along two of the walls of the room which let a ton of sunlight in (note the window shaped spot of light in the very middle of the photo), as well as some mirrors lining one edge of the room. For the most part, there was no direct sunlight coming into the spot we were shooting and I was able to spin around the mirrors on that side of the room to make sure we didn’t get any stray light bouncing back at the dancers.

The director discussing posing with the dancers

Technical stuff

First things first.  I had to make sure that the ambient light was all cut off before we started shooting.  (A little tip I first learned from The Strobist). Then secondly, check if using the “modeling” lights (the part of the strobe that is always on, so you can kind of see what you’re doing, as opposed to the bright flash that actually creates the light for the photo when you take the shot), are affecting the ambient exposure. Then test the back lights, and then the full setup.

ambient light

ambient w/ modeling lights on (bad!)

rim lights only

all 3 lights

In the second photo, you see that the modeling lights are creating too much ambient light in combination with what was already in the room, so I kept them off.

In the forth photo, you’ll see the light on the floor drops off dramatically before the curtain and the curtain is kind of dull since it is a bit dark. I decided I didn’t like that and solved the problem by simply moving the whole setup a few feet backwards. You’ll see that the curtain is closer to the dancers in all the final photos.

My key light was a Profoto D1 1000w with a frosted glass dome and a beauty dish. The rim lights were Profoto D1 500w’s with zoom reflectors and 20 degree grids. (I had on 5 degree grids on, but quickly realized that would be far too narrow for the number of dancers and poses that were going to happen in the shoot). Actually that reminds me to talk about why I set up my key light and rim lights like this anyway! I knew the dancers needed space since they were going to be jumping, spinning, and posing all differently from shot to shot.  With that, an on axis key would ensure that they would always be properly lit no matter which way they were facing.  It also gave them their full freedom to move around. If the key was off to the right, I would have been telling them “make sure to always do you move and end up facing the light over there” and that would have really slowed things down. It’s easy for them to just perform to/for the camera, so placing the key right above me really simplified things.

Side note, I thought about using my Profoto 180 Giant Parabolic Reflector (because I'm in love with it) but since I wasn’t sure where on campus I would be parking and how far I would have to carry everything (including the massive stand that awesome beast uses).  I opted for the lighter and more compact Profoto Beauty Dish this time. I'm pleased with the results! The 65 Degree light modifier high enough and back enough gave me the coverage I needed and the dancers the space they needed.

Even more technical stuff

I had the light setup planned before I got there (super important) but I also wanted to try a slightly new approach to actually setting it up. I find in most studio setups shooting at 125^th shutter speed, f/8, and ISO 100 is my best bet. I knew I wanted my key about a full stop over exposed and the rim lights a stop brighter than the key. (a “stop” of light is how you measure how bright the light is. It comes from the f-stop used in camera settings). So I set my key at f/11 and both rims at f/11 also. So since the key light was also hitting where the rim light was, the rim light area exposure was f/16 since two f/11 lights on the same spot creates f/16. I never actually measured the combined light on the rim lights; I only checked that all three lights were f/11 individually.  I think I eventually tuned the key up to f/11.3 because looking at the images on the computer I saw I needed a touch brighter key light.

Some photos!

Here are a few of my favorite photos from this shoot:

You can find the rest of the photos on facebook page here.

Thoughts After the Shoot
Since my key light was on axis with the camera, I found myself stuck up right against the light stand many of the times. I wish I would have brought a stand with a boom, so the light would be in the center, but the stand would be slightly off to the side so I could sit right under the light without the stand in my way. Also, I think I should have scooted the rim lights a little further back (but they ran in to the wall already where they were), or moved them closer to the center because I feel like on some of the photos the rim light was looking a little bit more like a side light. I would have liked it to not wrap around to the front of the dancers at all, but it only happened on a few photos.

There you go! Hope you liked the first REAL post! Questions, comments, concerns? Anything I should talk about next time? Anything I should NOT talk about next time? Too long? Too short (doubt that haha).  I'll talk less about the basics with ambients and explanation of some terminology, unless its new to the blog. Next post will be later this week about my first big philanthropic shoot!

The dancers, director, costume coordinator and myself.