Some pho­to­shoots are fun, some are stress­ful, some are for learn­ing from mis­takes and some are for teach­ing. Some are for­ma­tion­al, and a very rare few are those which you know — even mid-work — there will be a “before” and “after” against which every­thing else is created.

Both times I’ve worked solo with Kath­leen Hahn of idodances.com and Dance­club Asheville have been those last types. Her abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate not just through dance but in the dia­logue before and after a piece is unique and I’m all the bet­ter a pho­tog­ra­ph­er for it. Our first ses­sion was a time lapse of sorts, her danc­ing in var­i­ous places and com­bin­ing them in post­pro­duc­tion. The rep­re­sen­ta­tive piece of that ses­sion is “Ten­nis Courts”.

This ses­sion, indoors at her stu­dio in Asheville, was entire­ly dif­fer­ent. We were look­ing for indi­vid­ual moments where Kath­leen was mov­ing much less delib­er­ate­ly, with quick­er move­ments but with more com­mu­ni­ca­tion between us. It was also a ses­sion where she was using a pole, which sur­faced a num­ber of lay­ers to the work.

As a male pho­tog­ra­ph­er, it’s easy to be in the posi­tion of pow­er in a pho­to­shoot. Ooften the pho­tog­ra­phy stu­dio is intim­i­dat­ing itself, and one is work­ing with a sub­ject who can­not eas­i­ly stop and say “show me what you have so far”. There are often dis­crep­an­cies in vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties and also the inher­ent prob­lem of “male gaze” that must be addressed in every shoot. Put all of the above togeth­er along­side a ses­sion in a dance stu­dio where a main impe­tus is to reclaim all dance forms from patri­archy (if not too strong a phrase here) and impart con­fi­dence, my emo­tions were all over the place. “Should I be here with my cam­era? Should I be here at all? What is my role, what is Kath­leen’s role? Why can I do this with Kath­leen as a friend, and is that dif­fer­ent than a pro­fes­sion­al? Can I pub­lish these? Should I even con­sid­er sell­ing prints of these?”

For­tu­nate­ly, Kath­leen was more than up for the con­ver­sa­tion before, dur­ing, and after the shoot. And just as before, I came away a lit­tle wis­er and grate­ful for all those I encounter in my photography.

Sum­mer 2013, Mont­ford Park Asheville TN. Pho­tog­ra­phy from a long ago ses­sion that I final­ly put together.

Oz Arts host­ed FALL in June 2017 for “A Bend­ing of Its Own Kind”, and here are some of my favorite pho­tographs from that performance.

I was for­tu­nate to be the Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015 pho­tog­ra­ph­er, and as always there were many incred­i­ble ses­sions of the­ater, aeri­al­ists, pup­pets, and music. There are many, many, many tac­tics one can uti­lize when pho­tograph­ing per­for­mances. Long expo­sures, high-ISO cap­tures, processed images to high­light the per­former — all are good options. Anoth­er option on engag­ing the sub­ject: shoot once, process none. Shoot film, process, and take what develops.

In addi­tion to the actu­al live per­for­mances, I was also invit­ed to check out some rehearsals, includ­ing the work of the FALL com­pa­ny. It was pret­ty incred­i­ble to lis­ten in and hear some of their process as they rehearsed through the work, and to try and unob­tru­sive­ly cap­ture some of the dis­cus­sions in pho­tos. Below are three of those images next to one of the per­form­ers dur­ing the rehearsal set.

FALL Rehears­ing, Side Show Fringe Fes­ti­val 2015

Giv­ing up some con­trol with the medi­um lets me work in the avail­able light­ing and motion with­out stress­ing over the upcom­ing post-pro­cess­ing. A chance to pho­to­graph the mood and ambi­ence in the unpol­ished envi­ron­ment. A bit of a loos­er, yet more focused, feel­ing from the per­form­ers seems to come out in rehearsals. When the dancers are con­tin­u­ing the com­mit­ment of their work to mus­cle mem­o­ry it’s almost like a pho­to cri­tique. Peo­ple are look­ing for input, look­ing for encour­age­ment, but also any­thing that helps rise the lev­el of the work is welcome. 

Many thanks to FALL for allow­ing me to shoot the rehearsals!

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!

Move­ment pho­tog­ra­phy at the 2014 Sideshow Fringe Fes­ti­val. Beau­ti­ful per­for­mances with the FALL dance com­pa­ny and Aer­i­al Fab­ri­ca­tors.

Thank you to Jes­si­ka Mal­one and the entire Sideshow Fringe team for invit­ing me to be part of the event this year!

When the time came to leave Asheville, I real­ized that there were a few ses­sions that were “must-do” before the move. One of these was to work one-on-one with Kath­leen Hahn, a dancer/­chore­o­g­ra­pher/in­no­va­tor/all-around-great person.

We were orig­i­nal­ly going to do her Fever dance from four per­spec­tives, shot in the freez­er sec­tion of a local Ingle’s. Mid-way through our first per­spec­tive, secu­ri­ty let us know that pho­tog­ra­phy was not allowed. Which was a relief in a way, as it did make clear that danc­ing is absolute­ly allowed in the gro­cery. So — if you are ever look­ing for a place to per­form a dance piece, I’d say con­sid­er Ingle’s. Even light­ing and always a crowd.

Since our orig­i­nal plan did­n’t work, we decid­ed to move to a more open envi­ron­ment. The ten­nis courts in Mont­ford were ide­al — emp­ty of peo­ple, col­or­ful and avail­able. Kath­leen start­ed her rou­tine and I start­ed mak­ing pho­tographs. I loved the results — some of the stills are incred­i­ble, as you can see here and here. But at some point in the pro­cess­ing, I start­ed won­der­ing if they images could be lay­ered to any pos­i­tive out­come. With the gro­cery pieces, three lay­ers per image seemed suit­able, but the hor­i­zon­tal stage and lines of the ten­nis courts opened the image up for more. I think this final image is tak­en from thir­ty indi­vid­ual frames.

Kath­leen, Fever. August 2013

Each of the frames had to be adjust­ed to fit the image as I was hand­hold­ing the cam­era and not par­tic­u­lar­ly intend­ing this result. But the paint and net gave reli­able guides to com­bine the frames into one. I used Pho­to­shop to place the lay­ers, which are all com­bined with the Light­en mode. I then did a gen­er­al Adjust­ment Lay­er for con­trast and white bal­ance over all the frame layers.

I’m very excit­ed about this piece, as it result­ed from what could have been a dis­ap­point­ing end of the orig­i­nal ses­sion. How­ev­er, if we’d stayed in the gro­cery we would have nev­er found the ten­nis courts as a venue. I am also pleased with the dig­i­tal work — I had been shoot­ing film for so long before this ses­sion I had for­got­ten some of the ben­e­fits of work­ing with vari­able ISO’s, quick frames per sec­ond and (vir­tu­al­ly) unlim­it­ed image stor­age. A good use case for the flex­i­bil­i­ty of digital.

Thanks to Kath­leen for being part of this session!

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A fun and bound­ary-push­ing pho­tog­ra­phy ses­sion with Kath­leen Hahn of Asheville, NC.