Photography Portfolio 1 - Dance

For my photography A-Level, I had to do various portfolios that either the exam board gave to us or that we had chosen ourselves. I decided to post one of my portfolios here as all of my photos are just stuck on my USB stick so I wanted to do something with them; that way I can look back at my blog and be like oh yeah :) 
This portfolio is about dance. I chose this myself as I love dancing and so I wanted to look into using photoshop to represent movement such as the image above where I merged 4 poses into one frame. I also looked at how street dancers dress and act; trying to show that on camera. Photography takes a lot of time and hard work, especially the editing part of it. I think I spent a good hour editing that one photo above; merging the poses/changing the figures to white/adding a shadow etc. 

Here are two examples of how I tried to show the attitude and confidence that street dancers show. Using the dark backdrop in the first image and the brick wall in the second to aid it. I also looked at using artificial light and natural light, but I preferred the images that I took inside with the spotlights as they enabled me to create contrast better.

Here I used slow-sync photography to capture my model actually moving. I love this type of photography because it is interesting how they come out. I then used photoshop to create more contrast and just make the image look better. It is quite amusing taking these images as my friend had to move in slow motion so that the camera could pick all of it up properly.

I wanted to experiment with photoshop to make my images look more interesting and dynamic. So I tried blocking out my model so that just her silhouette was left behind, and then added the colourful borders around them. I liked the outcome of that one as I could imagine it being used for sports advertisements or something. I was also quite proud of my progressing PhotoShop skills haha.

I also tried just changing the colour of my model so that they are tinted. I was actually just being silly to be honest, but I actually liked it. I thought it looked fun and represented dance :)

Then I just added a shadow to the original images so that they stood out more against the background. With these types of images, I took different shots of dance moves and put them together so that it looks like one mini routine. 

As part of our coursework, we also had to respond to other photographer's work. I forget who I chose to respond to but I think they were just photographers off of flickr or something. I found it quite hard to find photos that related to my work! 

So for this image, I added a slight glow to the figures, then added little hoops around the moving parts of the body. This is what the photographer did for their work to exaggerate the movement I think :) But I actually think that it looks nice. This edit took forever too as I needed to insert the rings, then erase bits of them to look ass though they were going behind the arm or leg.

This is the last image that I liked from this set, and my gosh it took so long to edit! I had to insert each image twice, blackout one of them and put it behind each of their originals. Then I just added the glow. Although it took the longest, it is definitely my favourite :) Cutting out each figure from their backgrounds took ages too as these photos were stupidly taken on grass in front of a brick wall! Very proud of my PhotoShopping haha.

So yeahh, thats the end of my first portfolio that I have to share, hope you liked it as it is a bit different to what I would normally think about posting, but I love photography and it would just stay stuck on my USB otherwise. 

xx