Aeri­al­ists are incred­i­ble. Flat out, hands down — some of the most enter­tain­ing per­form­ers com­bined with incred­i­ble phys­i­cal abil­i­ties. Twist­ing, pulling, turn­ing, falling — it’s amaz­ing. See­ing an aer­i­al per­for­mance is great. Always, always, always go if you have the chance. The pho­to below is from the 2014 Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val. This ses­sion was with the FALL dance com­pa­ny and Aer­i­al Fab­ri­ca­tors.

The Bird (Move­ment IV, SSF 2014)

It’s been a long time since the last pho­to explo­ration post. The fall and win­ter were a pro­duc­tive time, just not for updat­ing this part of the web­site. So let’s dig in one a pho­to tak­en around the time of the last pho­to explo­ration!

Long expo­sures a great. They are easy to do, fun to share, and usu­al­ly pro­vide some very inter­est­ing results. Almost every pho­tog­ra­ph­er I know has gone through a water­fall peri­od, which usu­al­ly involves con­sid­er­a­tions for ND fil­ters, low-as-pos­si­ble-ISO, stop­ping down the lens and look­ing for the shadi­est spot pos­si­ble to get a good image of creamy water over still rocks. For that mat­ter, I still do those shots when the oppor­tu­ni­ty arises!

How­ev­er, when work­ing in a black box the­ater with high con­trast spot lights, it’s much eas­i­er to do long expo­sures than any­thing else. The ques­tion is, just HOW long should that expo­sure be? 1 sec­ond? 5? 1/2″? It’s tri­al and error at the start, and with per­for­mances you might not get a sec­ond chance. Pro tip: auto-brack­et­ing helps tremen­dous­ly in this sit­u­a­tion. But once you get the set­tings dialed in for the scene, some fan­tas­tic work can be captured.

I remem­ber the piece being incred­i­ble. Bursts of motion over­laid on still and gen­tle cross­ings of the stage. When the per­form­ers were climb­ing, it seemed like they could have stayed aloft for­ev­er. When one came down, it was like a bird emerg­ing from the egg and imme­di­ate­ly tak­ing flight. Enthralling, to say the least!