As photographers go through the process of honing our skills (a process that should be never-ending), most of us start out as generalists, and gradually move to the kinds of photography that we really enjoy most, whether it's family, landscapes, travel, product, fine art, sports, performing arts, or portraiture.  Right now, I'd consider myself primarily a performing arts photographer, based on the percentage of dance and theater images in my inventory.  But eventually, we do our best work in what we really love to do most.  For me, at least right now, it's environmental portraiture, or as Joe McNally calls it, "a face in a place".  

I recently finished shooting the St. John's Episcopal School's production of "Beauty and the Beast", which concluded its four-performance run.  I try to cover the production from rehearsals through the final performance, including at least one trip to the school's multipurpose room where the cast members do their hair and makeup.  It's a fun environment before the "last hurrah".  I get images of the kids putting on each others' makeup, or moms fussing over hair, maybe some group shots... you get the picture.

This year, I had a little more time, so I pulled a few of the kids aside for some impromptu portraits, either with their tools (as with Natalie above), or just up against a blank wall.  I like the way they turned out.

Emily played the role of Cogsworth, the human clock. She was putting her own hair together, and I asked her to simply look toward the window light, supplemented with a single speedlite fitted with a Lumiquest Big Bounce, held off-camera and pointed straight into Emily's face by another student cast member.  Total time from concept to execution, about 30 seconds.

Aashi was doing her eye makeup up against a blank wall, with window light flooding in from behind her, camera right. For this shot, I asked her to hold her mirror just out of frame at an angle that would reflect the window light back into her face.  The catchlight in the bottom of her iris comes from the hand-held mirror. I then exposed for her face.  Exposing for a face otherwise in shadow brings a glow to the rest of the image. This is all ambient light.

Andi is fair-skinned, and I wanted to take it even further with a cooler, almost high-key, high contrast look.  I asked her to pose up against the blank wall and to give me a serious look.  My VAL ("voice activated lightstand" - another cast member) held the speedlite 45 degrees up and over to camera left to give me a loop lighting pattern on Andi, and I captured this very mature look, especially for a middle schooler.  Ordinarily, I'd want a little more light in the eyes, but without it, the mood is even more dramatic.  Not a typical look for a fun-loving kid, but very effective for a young actress.

I went the other way with Joe.  This is Joe in costume.  I loved the way he rocked the hat, kind of a cross between a fedora and a porkpie.  The costume designer really picked a winner with her atypical approach to Beauty and the Beast.  This time, the single speedlite is held at eye level to camera right to give modeling to the face.  The typical 45 degrees up and over would have produced shadow on the eyes from the hat, which I didn't want.  I asked Joe to lower his glasses for two reasons, first, to avoid glare from the flash itself, but more importantly, to give Joe some attitude.

Dylan played the lead role as the Beast.  If you look up the word "ham" in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Dylan.  This kid was born to act.  Though short in stature at this age, he more than makes up with confidence and dedication.  One might not initially consider casting a shorter actor for the lead role as the Beast, but Dylan brought his own energy and personality to the performance and totally sold it.  I wanted Dylan's confidence to show in this quick portrait, minus his Beast wig and mask, so I shot from below and gave him precise facial direction, including the patented Peter Hurley squint and smirk, and once again, he sold it.

Last night, at about 2:30 a.m. my "best girl ever" daughter Katherine and I got back from the Coachella Music Festival, the annual alternative music fest in Indio, California, that draws kids from all over for three days and nights of ear-splitting, brainstem-wilting music and other fun activities.  Going to Coachella was the greatest thing Katherine could possibly imagine, but it took moving heaven and earth to convince her mom and me that she could go.  The solution, which was validated by several other random and dispassionate folks who offered their opinion on the matter, was that mom would by the tickets and I would also go. And while "alternative" music isn't exactly my cup of tea, I looked on it as an opportunity to test a couple of cameras that I could legally carry in with me, as the posted rules prohibited anything that looked like a professional camera on the premises.  So in I went, armed only with my trusty Leica D-Lux 5, and my new iPhone.

The D-Lux 5 is a nice camera for a point and shoot, outfitted as it is with a Leica Vario-Summicron lens that will go down to f/1.2.  It's feature-rich and very flexible.  What it isn't is rapidly responsive, which is exactly what you need in a target rich environment like a music festival, where interesting faces and images flash across your field of view and then rapidly vanish.  It also doesn't have the reach you need to see the action on the stage when you're about half a mile back. I desperately wanted the reach and the responsiveness of my Canon 7D fitted with the 70-200mm f/2.8.   (Heck, I coulda used 800mm for some of the acts.)  The iPhone cam is also much better than my previous DroidX; the sunset image above was captured with the iPhone, and managed through iPhoto, Nik Dfine 2.0 and HDR Efex Pro.  Not bad for a phone cam.

Ben Jonson's 1614 "Bartholomew Fair" is credited with the first use of the phrase "belly of the beast".  He asks, "What do you say to a drum, sir?  It is the broken belly of the beast, and the bellows there are his lungs, and these pipes are his throat, those feathers are of his tail, and thy rattles the gnashing of his teeth."  

I can honestly say that for the first time in many years, I was left speechless, musically speaking.  Also hearing-less.  The beast that is Coachella was simply overwhelming.  My industrial grade earplugs disintegrated under the barrage.  The image to the left was made on the first afternoon, before the rains came, at a central location called the "Do Lab".  What they "do" at the "lab" is feature non-headliners who blast dubstep and similar riffs at Atlas rocket decibel levels.  Located at the center of the fairgrounds, the bass lines from the Do Lab carry across the entire festival grounds.  The only way the other acts can compete with this is to match them decibel for decibel, which they are more than happy to do.  Meanwhile, they hose down the crowd with pressure washers. 

Having celebrated the 30th anniversary of my 30th birthday last week, I was pretty much at a loss when it came to identifying the dozens of performers on the three-day lineup.  Highest on my list of acts to see was the venerable reggae artist Jimmy Cliff, who performed on the main stage early Friday evening, just as the rains came.  I got to the main stage early enough to be relatively close (like maybe 100 feet away).  Unfortunately, the little Leica didn't quite have the reach I needed to get the performers in tight.  But fortunately, each of the five stages at Coachella has two large video screens on either side of the stage, and most people wind up watching a live performance on TV.  

For me, the most poignant image of Friday was Jimmy singing "I can see clearly now, the rain is gone...it's gonna be a bright, bright, sunshiny day" while the rain soaked everyone.

I also wanted to see Florence and the Machine, who performed on the Outdoor Stage.  I got there in what I thought was plenty of time, but the stage was so far away, she might as well have been in Denver.

Some of the acts did surprise me, in a good way.  "St. Vincent" (aka Annie Clark) was news to me, but I enjoyed watching her high-energy performance. Standing off to the side of the tent in which she performed, I was able to capture one decent image of her performance, at -2EV.

At one point, she decided to "crowd surf" as far as her microphone cord would reach.  The crowd went predictably nuts, but from my vantage point, all I could get was the image from the video screen taken from the stage as the security guys anxiously hoped nobody would drop her.  She never missed a beat.

The main reason Katherine wanted to go to Coachella was to see some of her favorite "dance music" artists, including Alesso, Avicii, Calvin Harris, and Afrojack.  There were others, too, but at my advanced age, I can't force myself to remember them.  Here's the deal: the tent fills up with amped up kids, the "artist" gets up on a high perch with his turntable/mixing board/whatever he has, and pumps his fists for about an hour or more, while a light show flashes and the same incessant bass beat pounds into your brainpan til it has the consistency of naval jelly.

Katherine and I re-enacted the age-old parent/child debate:  Me: "How can you listen to that shit?  It all sounds exactly the same!  You're gonna go deaf!  I already am!!"  Her: "Daddy, this is the best day of my life!!"

At the end of the three days, we were both exhausted.  I drove back home while Katherine slept in the car.  She needed to get up for school this morning.  While driving back, I riffed on the oft-seen commercial:  Coachella tickets - $700; hotel and meals - $300; bonding with your daughter - priceless.

I shoot a lot of dance.  Studio shots, performances, locations, and competitions, you name it.  I've shot dozens of dance competitions over the years, ranging from ancient high school theaters to modern high school gyms.  

Being designed for performances, the lighting in high school theaters is not generally bad, as long as the school continues to pay the light bill. Sometimes it's not up to par, but usually setting a tungsten white balance on a digital camera will give you a place to start and a fighting chance.   Then you have to contend with the dance competition banner in the back.  Some are relatively inoffensive while others are just plain garish.  But you can deal with it, as long as the company producing the competition allows photography in the first place, which is becoming less and less the norm.

But shooting high school competitions in gymnasiums is a whole 'nuther thing.  Even the most modern high school gymnasiums have lighting that cycles between magenta and green color casts.  Usually the naked eye doesn't pick up on this cycling, but a shutter speed that's fast enough to freeze the dancers' action will often pick up the color cast.  So a burst of three to seven frames will generally give you a magenta-cast exposure, a green-cast exposure, and sometimes a rainbow of magenta, green, and something approaching normal all in one frame.  Add to that the fact that the background behind the dancers in a high school gym usually consists of bleachers half-filled with assorted spectators who may or may not be paying attention, plus speakers, trash bins, dance bags, lunch bags, old bags, water bottles, and other dreck, and you have little hope of getting anything that approaches art, no matter how talented and beautiful the dancers are.

And then there's the Anaheim Convention Center, this weekend the home of the USA National Cheer and Dance competition.  The preliminary competitions are held either in a dimly lit hotel ballroom, complete with parquet flooring pieced together like every wedding reception you've ever been to, or in the hangar-size trade show hall in the Convention Center itself, which has been outfitted with the aforementioned bleachers, a basketball court (minus the hoops), and color-casting lights.

Then there are the two hired photogs who capture each and every dancer with eight (count 'em, eight) nuclear strobes mounted to the top of the bleachers.  (Even at a flash duration of 1/1500 second or faster, you're bound to get at least 10 of their flashes during the weekend.)  I don't envy these guys.  They probably see about 250 dance performances a day, with anywhere from four to over thirty dancers in each performance.  Trying to get something for each dancer is an exercise in futility.  They're good, but really all they can do is "spray and pray".  By the end of the day, I don't think they can see straight.

After qualifying in regional competitions weeks earlier and competing in the hotel or trade show hall on Friday, the dancers' first goal is to make it to the Finals, held on Saturday night in the Arena at the Convention Center.  For photographers, the goal is also to make it to the Finals, because that's where the Good Light is.  At this level, these dancers are incredibly talented and hard working.  They deserve to be seen performing their art in the best possible environment.  Here in the SoCal circuit, that's the Arena.  Directional without being harsh, and consistent across the entire performance space, the lighting in the Arena is more than you could hope for.  And the environment gives you the choice of photographing against a large clean backdrop with a boatload of trophies if you want that, or shooting into the void if you prefer that (which I do).

Photographing talented dancers in this environment is a dance shooter's dream. You can go for straight visual impact, as in the photo of Cole above, which is devoid of the normal distractions, and her expression and talent practically jump off the photo.  Cole is a beautiful dancer, with lines and an expression that are guaranteed to hold your interest.  In terms of impact on the judges, I'd be willing to bet that Cole is money.

Or you can tell a visual story, as in the picture of Ian and the Saugus dance team below.

This competition marked the return of Ian Waschak to competitive dance after several weeks sidelined with injury.  This routine is one of several he competed over the weekend, and was undoubtedly one of the most challenging and impressive of all.  It's an incredibly demanding piece.  You can see the pain he's fighting through, and his teammates appear to be caught in it, too.  That's not the story of the choreography at all, but it's the truth of this image at this particular moment in time.  Ian completely nailed every move, leap, extension, and lift.  He literally "left it all on the dance floor", and at the conclusion of the piece, he needed help to get backstage.  I've never seen anything like it.