Our slots filled up so fast when we announced that Rachel Neville Photography is coming to San Francisco in August that we have decided to add another day!

Sign up now to schedule your photo shoot with Rachel Neville for Tuesday, August 29.

It’s going to be a fabulous trip.  We are packing up some of our favorite props, outfits and fabrics from the Rachel Neville Photography Studio in NYC and bringing them across the country.  San Francisco, get ready for the real Rachel Neville Photography experience.

Can’t wait to see you, West Coast clients and friends!

We had a really lovely pair of girls in the studio a couple of weekends ago, friends who were very different dancers but who supported each other and were thick as thieves.  I had done dance photo shoot with both dancers previously, so they understood the process you have to go through to create powerful audition photos and they had a good amount of patience with themselves.  It was a really fun day with lots of laughter and support.

Siobhan Howley, Dancer Photo Rachel Neville

Nevertheless, it was so interesting for me to note each dancer’s reactions to her images.  One dancer would come over to the screen and ‘ooo’ over a shot, the other dancer tended to focus on one or two parts of the image that she was not finished finessing yet or was having trouble with.

Sound familiar???

How often do you look in the mirror while you are dancing and find yourself dissatisfied with your work because one body part seems to not want to co-operate with you?  How often do you put your lipstick on, note how tired you look under your eyes (maybe a little concealer there?) and then pay attention to the imperfections of your lip line only to have your lips start to just look really weird to yourself?

Kelly Spencer, Dancer Photo Rachel Neville

So often, we look at ourselves in parts and do not look at ourselves as a whole.  Of course, we are trained to do that so that we can improve, to self correct and to progress.  I find almost at least once a shoot, I’ll have to remind a dancer that there is potential in a shot, that we just need to fine tune or try again and stop their heads from jumping on the ‘I’m not good enough’ train.  So often, and I really do mean almost every day, a dancer who gives up on a shoot at this point or thinks they can’t achieve a line or a jump or movement is actually only one or two more attempts away from an amazing shot.

Kaeli Ware, Dancer Photo Rachel Neville

When I was in labor with my first child, I remember asking my midwife ‘how much $%##ing longer?’ and she replied ‘as long as it takes’.  She was right of course, but what she told me afterwards was that for homebirthers, it’s usually at the point that we ask that question that we are almost there.

So my recommendation for you today: take a step back.

See the forest, not just the trees.  It just may be right around the corner.  Try again.  And if you are in my studio, do it again with ‘MORE!!!’.

A couple of weeks ago I bought an audio book Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People by Vanessa Van Edwards. Ms. Van Edwards is a social scientist and the book’s purpose is to help create a manual for social hacks and teach how to effectively network and understand human behavior (in case you’re wondering why I was interested, I am actually an extremely introverted person when it comes to being in large group settings…).

Did I catch your attention?

Now, my fellow photographers, let me ask you this important question:

How long have you been shooting dancers and how can I help?

I’ve been shooting dancers since I was in college for photography almost 20 years ago (holy cow!). I’ve made all the same mistakes you are making now, and chances are, scads more!

One of my missions is to bring more beauty to the world, help dancers and dance companies with their careers’ and businesses, and bring the love and joy of dance to as many people as possible.  This past year I’ve been working on my mission by helping other photographers to do the same: to do their best work, learning how to help the dancers look their best, and to gain confidence.  That’s why I can’t wait to share our education portal for dance photographers – it’s just about ready!

Today, I’m here to alert you to 3 mistakes I often see photographers make when they shoot dancers, and to give you some quick tips to solve them.

Grace Weidemann, Dancer Photo Rachel Neville

3 Dance Photography Mistakes You Need to Stop Making Now

1) Shooting too high

I can always tell when a photographer comes to shooting dance from a portrait background.  We all know that, unless you are going for a particular effect, one shoots a portrait from a little bit higher angle than the subject.  So, when I see the top down angle on a dancer I almost always know the photographer is into portraits.  Not the take-away you want from your dance photos!

Tip: Almost all dancers look better if you shoot with your lens at waist level or lower.  Don’t be afraid to get down on the ground or to lie on the floor.

2) Flat lighting

So often I see photographers who get stuck in a lighting pattern that is designed to light faces, not bodies.  For dance photos, we need lighting designed to highlight the lines and musculature of the body.

Tip: Experiment!  Move that light 360 degrees around your dancer and see what it can do.

3) Crotch shots

Dancers love to show off their flexibility and technique… but it’s never flattering to them or to you when the first thing you see in an image is wide open legs and a crotch staring right at you.  There is a level of sexuality in dance that can be lovely, or it can be inappropriate.

Tip: Minimize the area of a dancer’s body that you don’t want to highlight by altering their angle of movement.  You can also try adding a skirt, prop or garment to cover the area.

Over several years I’ve created a method of working with dancers to translate their 3 Dimensional movements and poses into what looks good in 2D (screens and print).  Trademarked The Neville Method, I introduce this technique in our workshops and curriculum, but in the next post here, I will give you a taste – so stay tuned.

In the meantime, drop us an email and we’d be happy to give you more information on our programs for photographers and to answer any questions you have!

 If you answered this question by saying that knowing how or when to freeze the action or knowing how to light dancers you’d be on par with most photographers who shoot dancers.

If you mentioned knowing how to interact with dancers, networking, and ‘creating your style’ or ‘brand’ you’d belong to the second biggest set of photographers.

While all that is significant, I think the single most important and often the most overlooked skill, is knowing how to direct dancers and make them look good.

Don’t get me wrong, all the above skills are necessary and are an important part of the process. But where 95% of photographers who shoot dance go wrong is relying on the skill of the dancer in front of them to make themselves look good, hit the right line, fine tune their work themselves. If you are working with professional dancers you’ll of course have much better outcomes, but 98% of the dance photography market is not professional dancers.

Would it surprise you to know that 80% of my work is not done with dancers who have contracts??

I can hear half of you reading this now saying the same thing; ‘…but you were a dancer, how can I direct dancers if I wasn’t?’

I am here to tell you that developing your eye and the skill to direct good technique can be learned! I’ve been developing this method for the last 10 years, fine tuning it, tweaking it, and touching on it in our workshops this past year. We just launched our two year, comprehensive Neville Method program (drop us a line here if you are interested) that will, among other topics, be diving into this topic deeply.

But Rachel!  What‘s in that secret sauce?

There are several prongs to the Neville method but the first one is to start thinking about the transition from 3D to 2D.  Dancers work in 3D and we do not. The end result of a photograph is a flat print or image on screen. It is our job, therefore, to help them to understand how to translate what they do in the dance studio and on stage for the flat medium of photography and videos.

There are many tricks to doing this, but let me give you just a few to start working with today:

Ask your dancers to do most of their movements or poses on a more side to side plane as 80% of movements will look better faster this way.  You will partially eliminate the perspective shift that make limbs that are farther away from the camera lens look smaller and those towards the camera look larger.  I often use the analogy of having your dancer feel like they are moving in between two panes of glass that are abut 8 inches wide.

Another common shift we make in my studio is to analyze arm lines to make sure they read correctly on screen. You’ve all seen them: arms that look like they are coming out of the dancers head, one arm that seems to be so much shorter than the other arm, or a curved arm that reads as if it‘s straight.  Arm lines that are parallel to the camera lens often do not shoot well. Have your dancer try out different arms lines so that they create a more pleasing line, and experiment with some different options before settling on the final line.  Working one or both arms toward the flat plane that is perpendicular to the camera is a great place to start.

A great exercise is to practise with one of those anatomy dolls that have movable limbs.   Set your camera up on a tripod at the level of the table you have the doll on and shoot off a series of tests to see how moving the arms in different directions or curves will actually translate when you shoot it.

Drop us a line and let us know how that exercise works out for you!

In my last post about headshots we talked about whether you should choose a smile or not.  While a toothy grin may not be appropriate for all audition photos, we do know that a genuine smile is always better than a fake smile.

So I know this probably had many of you thinking: but I don’t like the way my smile (or fill in the blank) expression reads in photographs!

As dancers we train for years perfecting the last details of our bodies.  Too often we don’t focus on our intention or facial expression until the last rehearsals of a variation or piece of choreography.  So many of us don’t train our faces in the same way we train our feet!  So we wind up not knowing exactly what we look like when we are giving different expressions or emotions.

Before I begin any headshot session we test the dancer/model’s face out.  We start this process by asking the dancer to give us absolutely no expression, and then to roll their smile up a tiny bit at a time, a little like rolling back the lid on a can of sardines.  That way we can look at the shots and see where we like the dancer’s face at different points on their smile.  Then we put the smile on a number scale: 0 = no smile, fully relaxed face to 5 = full on genuine smile. Once this scale has been established, we can then start to communicate about just how much a smile we need, or where the face should land on any given shot.  Of course that doesn’t take into consideration true expression that is felt from the inside (which of course can change everything), but it gives us a place to start.

 

Understanding how to work with the dancer’s mouth helps us to achieve the most pleasing effect.  Take me for example!  I have a mouth shape that looks like I’m frowning, upset, or even a little mean when my face is totally relaxed.  When I was younger I became known for being a little aloof or moody. Until I started having headshots taken of myself, I never realized that I had that effect on people by simply being in a facially relaxed state!  I have a pretty severe resting b*tch face!  To this day, on my scale of 0-5, I personally can really only shoot in the 5 range without looking upset or angry, my mouth just really only looks good in a big smile.  There are some people who look really good in the bottom numbers, some that are better higher, and some that can do one or two areas.  In any given year, we really only find about 2 or 3 people that can do the full range, it’s incredibly rare!

So what is your take away here?

Practice makes perfect! Looking at your self in the mirror as you make faces, an excercise that everyone feels silly doing, is probably a really good idea if you want to start working with your face effectively.  Just remember that you are looking at your face backwards (horizontally inverted) in the mirror!