First, we need a little backstory. For the past couple of years, I've been the photographer for PoleFIT Revolution, a fitness club focusing on performance art involving poles, silks, and multiple other platforms. It's a wonderful organization, and every single person involved is an incredible human being. Seriously, I'm not kissing ass to potential customers here; a large amount of the best people I currently know work and/or perform for this company.
Every spring and autumn, PoleFIT throws a showcase as an opportunity for the teachers to demonstrate the progress their classes have made, and for individual performers to unveil acts they are currently perfecting. It's an awesome night, tons of fun, and one of the hardest shoots I get to do all year.
Let's talk about why.
My first showcase was a mess in so many ways. PoleFIT has two locations, and while they have plenty of room on a normal day to accommodate a large class of active dancers, when you seat an audience of 2 or 3 dozen people in there, things get a little snug. Add space limitations to a general lack of knowledge about each performance's movements (what poles the dancer(s) was going to use, how much space they would need for a certain move, WHEN they would do said moves and transfers, etc.), and I was left with the daunting realization that I would have to use whatever light was available in the studio.
While that seemed okay at first, since the setup has lights set in a very theater-like formation aiming down at about 45-degrees in multiple places. This is good, that's where I want light anyways, but they are dimmer than I'd prefer, and I knew I'd need a MINIMUM of 1/60 shutter speed to have the faintest hope of catching their moves and transfers at a reasonable sharpness. At the time, the lowest aperture lens I had was an f3.5, so my only hope was to pump up the ISO to a level that there would DEFINITELY be graininess in the shot.
Listen, these people are amazingly talented, and had been honing these performances for months, or even YEARS, before this showcase. PoleFIT is host to medal winners and international performers, many of which are paying me to capture proof of their progress within 10 shots or more. I would've loved to have 5 strobes ready to go with an equal number of assistants ready to move them to the perfect spot at a moment's notice in order to contour the dancer's form as she nails a Superman hold. But I didn't. I had no room for extra lights (at the time, we'll come back to that in a bit), and my wife, who would have been an assistant on any other day, is also a performer and needed to save her energy for her act. Regardless, I had a job to do, so I saddled up, put my eye in my viewfinder, and got to work.
"Blue Collar Photography" is a phrase I use in situations like this, when conditions are less than your ideal but you gotta power through it anyways. It's when composition is king, because the light is working against you and sharpness is only going to happen if you're constantly moving with your subject. It's tiring. Back-breaking, even, but dealing with these situations has developed my style in a way that nothing else really has.
You'll notice from these shots that I adopted a lot of low-angles. At that first show, that wasn't a conscious decision; I was trying to use as much of the white ceiling as possible for some light bounce, not to mention a lower angle allowed me to separate the dancer from background noise like the audience and wall details, since I couldn't do it with a flash. As a happy accident, I discovered that this low angling did wonders for exaggerating the height of their climbs as well, adding a lot more drama and danger to everything.
Major note here: getting a lot of these shots meant lying on the ground or kneeling. Since I'm watching these dances for the first time WHILE I'm also taking pictures for them, this means getting into position requires dropping on a dime to get the shot. It's a very painful night, but it helps to remind myself that I'm not exerting myself half as hard as my subject is.
Nancy Reagan once told photographer Joe McNally to "Never photograph a woman below eye-level." But I'm pretty sure the former First Lady never pole danced, so...yeah.
All the shots on today's post are from the most recent showcase back in October. I'm able to take the main shots before the event itself during dress rehearsal now, which allows me much more freedom of movement, and also has given me the chance to set up flash heads without fear of blinding the general audience.
I decided to set them up high by attaching them to ceiling beams using some zip-ties. Aim them towards the dance floor, put some magenta gels on them, and BAM, you got what looks like some snazzy stage-lighting. I love high back-lighting; to me, it has a quality like a concert at a small venue. Very dramatic, even more so when all other lights are turned off and the subject is sporting some LEDs.
These pictures are much better than that first showcase, but they wouldn't look half as good, even with the strobes, if I didn't learn from my experience.
Rambling, spontaneous post aside, if there's anything, and I mean ONE THING, I would like you to take away from me here, it's to just take the damn picture. Don't skip opportunities just because you think the shot isn't going to be everything you wanted. Sometimes you'll surprise yourself with how good it actually turned out, and if you don't, you'll learn so much more from failing than from not acting at all.
You can check out PoleFIT Revolution's Facebook at
https://www.facebook.com/poleFITrevolution/
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More Bryce Grumley Photography at:
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I was always impressed with the shots you got while rolling and sliding on the floor during the showcase. Thanks for doing what you do!
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