Dance photography – studio lighting with dramatic shadows

Jaqlin and I wanted to create photos in the studio that captured the sheer power in her dance movements. It took several tries for me to get her at the peak of her jump.

The lighting here is very simple — a single Profoto B1x 500Ws flash (B&H / Amazon), and the Profoto Magnum reflector (B&H / Amazon). With the flash high up on a light-stand in the studio, I wanted it to simulate hard sunlight, with the shadow of Jaqlin, the dancer, being part of the design of the image.

The shadow has this almost a double image, which enhanced the feeling of motion. The Magnum reflector is pretty big for a non-softbox reflector type light modifier … so you have the actual flash head which gives you a hard light, but the “dish” part of the Magnum reflector gives you that kind of double edged shadow that you see there.

To that end, I used a white paper backdrop so there would be no distractions. I had to extend the background a bit in Photoshop.

I set the Profoto B1x in Freeze mode to make sure we don’t get movement smear in the photo, but just a crisp image of the dancer.

You can see the flash and Profoto Magnum reflector in the top right-hand corner of this behind-the-scences photo.