Dance shoots are INCREDIBLY fun, and we make some amazing art that you’ll love forever. There’s a lot of work involved in each shoot though, for both the dancer and the photographer. Here are a bunch of tips to make sure your dance shoot is amazing!

It’s pretty important to know what your photos are for, and approach your shoot that way. Many of our clients want digital photos for portfolios, applications, or to share on social media; others want beautiful art prints on their wall. Sometimes people want images to document their dance evolution! Sharing your goals will help us plan for your shoot.

If you need headshots or body shots, we’ll start with those, then move on to dance.

Think about the styles you’d like to showcase. Hip hop? Ballet? Contemporary? Ballroom? Tap? Acrobatics? Sculpted muscle shots? It’s wise to pick a few to focus on. We’ll typically get through two to four outfits/styles in a session.

I’ll send you a survey with questions to help me understand the kind of images you like and what you hope to get out of the session. You can also send me moodboard/inspo photos using this link; I’ll see them before the session, and we can reference them during the session too.

Moves and poses

Once you have your styles, think of the moves/poses you’d like to showcase. A good rule of thumb is 5-8 moves/poses per style. Choose moves you know you rock at that make you look awesome! If you’re stuck, think through routines from your classes/performances. This goes for body shots and fashion/editorial looks too.

Diversity is great; you’ll appreciate the results if you have diverse moves over samey ones. Some of the most successful sessions have come from dancers that bring a mix of standing poses, floor poses, and jumps.

If you want specific music to either set the vibe or to match a routine you know, great! Prep them on your phone and pair with our speakers. 🙂 Music can help you to recall your moves.

Once you’ve found your moves/poses, prepare them like you’d prepare for a performance – practice!! You want to be able to smash out your poses without thinking on the day, because we’ll take them and make subtle variations or improvise to make the most compelling photos. We will adjust what we’re doing depending on what’s working or where we want to take it.

OK, I know, you’re thinking “It’s ok, I’ll be able to come up with poses and moves, I don’t need to prepare them.” Guess what? EVERYONE’s brain freezes up sometimes when there’s a camera pointed at them. Trust me, practicing and preparing your moves and poses is a must.

If you are really stuck, those inspo/moodboard photos you sent with that link above will be super useful. We might start by using them as inspiration, and then building on them to make some one-of-the-kind art for you. 

If you’re not sure about something, reach out and ask me! We are a team, and together we’re going to make some amazing art.

Preparing outfits

Choosing outfits is really important. Get this done ahead of time – don’t wait until the morning of the shoot to assemble your outfits! Bring at least one outfit for each style.

For a photo session, a well-stocked dance bag should probably have:

  • Leotards – Black, white, nude, and then colours.
  • Skirts, tutus – performance or practice. Flowy skirts paired with a leotard make for gorgeous shots.
  • Activewear – if your style requires activewear/crop tops, pack these, and bring what you love to wear.
  • Jackets/shirts – An oversized business shirt or a leather jacket pairs really well with a leotard, lingerie, or activewear. A cropped leather jacket is super effective.
  • Costumes – if you have costumes or dance uniforms, bring those! (If you have the opportunity to raid the closet at a dance school, that’s never a bad thing.)
  • Shoes, boots, heels – if your style relies on shoes, pack them! (And skates, if that’s your thing!)
  • For fashion body shots – anything goes, but fabrics without patterns will help to emphasis your lines.

The key is to bring heaps of options if you can – that will give us more room to experiment on the day with light and colour. Test them ahead of time to make sure you’re happy with how they look, and keep an eye out for any holes or runs. If they’re on hangers, even better, we’ll hang them at the start of the shoot and evaluate on the day.

The night before

The night before? Look after your body. Eat properly, get a solid 8 hours of sleep. Eat properly in the morning too, like you would before a performance. And stay hydrated. Every little thing you can do to help your skin glow is a good thing.

Hair and Makeup

It’s important to give a lot of attention to your hair and makeup! Most of our clients do their own hair/makeup, and arrive either fully done, or arrive early and then use our makeup stations to prepare. If you’d like me to arrange a hair/makeup artist for you, give me lots of notice; that will add $80-$150 to the cost of your session.

For makeup, generally you should aim for more makeup than you would wear during the day, but a little less than the typical level of performance makeup. If you’re not sure, lean towards natural makeup, with natural colours. Avoid makeup with glitter (unless we have discussed a concept shoot!). Spend time on good foundation, blush or bronzer, and clean eyeliner and mascara. Beware of foundation with sunscreen, sometimes it doesn’t play nicely with studio lights.

For hair, think ahead to the look you want, and of course what works for you. If you straighten your hair, bring your straightener with you to the studio for fixes if necessary. Curled hair with lots of body always looks amazing too! Be ready to tie it back, put it up, or pin it, depending on what the shot needs.

For skin, when we shoot styles with a harder edge (athletic, muscle shots, bold poses) the shot always benefits from an all-over sheen. If you have a preferred body gloss product for this, bring it along. We will have options including PhotoSkin ready to go.

Shoot day!

When you are packing on the shoot day, don’t forget a towel and water bottle. We’ll have water in the studio too.

Before the shoot, I’ll confirm the studio location with you. We photograph in several locations, so make sure you know where you are going!! Here are maps and instructions for the studios that we use; check your booking and ask if you aren’t sure.

You are generally welcome to arrive early, for makeup touchups or to just chill out before your session. I’ll let you know via email how early you can be there, and seriously you are most welcome to get there early!

It’s good to arrive 20-30 minutes early so you can warm up and hang up your outfits. (Earlier if you are doing hair and/or makeup at the studio.) Warming up and stretching is really really important, so don’t forget it. It will help with your flexibility so you look your best, and of course it will help you minimise the possibility of injuries.

Shooting in a great photography studio is awesome, but usually that means no sprung floors. Please keep this in mind as you plan, practice, and shoot, and make sure you’re pacing yourself and planning for safety on a hard floor.

I always recommend that you bring a friend (or parent) that knows your strengths and what you can do. Pick someone you trust, so they can offer you their opinion on outfits or poses. Also, you know what? It’s just good for safety. (Under 18’s must be accompanied by a parent/guardian.)

When your session starts, we’ll have a chat about first outfits and styles, I’ll get lights ready while you change, we’ll get all set up and ready to go, then… there’s a really good chance as soon as the camera is on you, all of those ideas you had are going to disappear out of your mind. Don’t stress, that’s normal. This is when you fall back to the poses you had in mind, any inspo photos you had, and that music you brought can be helpful too. So will your friend or parent, especially if you’ve talked with them ahead of time about the kind of things you’d like try.

When you’re in the studio and ready to dance, we’ll view the shots on an iPad as we shoot. Usually we’ll shoot a set, review them together, figure out what we want to adjust, then go again. Seeing the images on the iPad helps us understand where the light is coming from and how things look to the camera.

As we work through your moves, you’ll find that I’m giving you directions that might be a little different to how you might do things in a performance. We’re taking a three-dimensional moving art form and translating it to a two-dimensional still photograph, and we’ll make adjustments so the images are amazing. It’s normal for me to give you directions like:

  • With moving poses, we’ll often run them multiple times and adjust the direction of your approach, to get just the right look for the camera.
  • In a standing pose, I might ask you to hold a position for a little longer, so you’re nearly overbalancing, and I’ll catch the pose just as you start to go over. That’s a great dynamic shot.
  • I’ll get you to try variations with your head tilted up and towards the light, in profile, to camera, with eyes open and closed, and so on. (I will endlessly remind you to bring your face to the light. Bank on it.)
  • I may direct you on facial expressions. When you’re concentrating on your moves and poses, you might not always realise what your face is doing. That practice you did ahead of time for those moves? That will leave you free to focus on making other adjustments like facial expressions.
  • Sometimes I’ll get you to tense all the muscles in your arms/legs/stomach/neck, especially if we’re wrapping light around you, to really show off your tone.
  • If there’s a move you love but it doesn’t quite carry over to 2D (eg an arm blocking your face from the camera) we’ll alter the pose to make it the most effective.
  • We might vary a pose to something weird – that can look really effective!

No matter what, it’s important to remember that this is a collaboration! You’ll arrive with your ideas, I’ll arrive with mine. You take the experience you’ve gained from your performances, your teachers, your friends, your choreographers, and your costume designers. I’ll focus on the composition, the lighting, the colours, the timing, and the technical excellence to make the result sing. When we’re shooting, don’t be afraid to suggest things to try! It’s ok to try things and discover they don’t work; you move on and try other things to get to the spectacular shots! The best outcomes are always when the dancer and photographer work together to create something special.

We’re going to repeat poses/moves over and over to get everything just right. Sometimes we’ll get it right very quickly. Other times we’ll need to repeat 20-30 times to get everything just perfect. That’s totally normal! I promise it’s totally worth it. 

During the shoot, if you need to stop and take a break, or something isn’t working for you, that’s ok! Let me know if you’re weary of a move and want to go on to the next thing. Safety is SUPER important – if you’re concerned about aggravating an injury or you can tell things aren’t quite right, take a break.

If you or your friends/family are taking behind-the-scenes shots, we’d really appreciate them if you’re happy to share! Visit our BTS upload page right from your phone to send them our way.

Colour or plain backgrounds?

Sometimes when we add colour, we’ll use coloured gels on lights, especially when we want a variation in colours. Sometimes we’ll shoot on a pure white background and add colour in post-processing… or texture… or convert to B&W. For commercial-style images, this is often the best strategy – shoot on a plain white background and edit colour in later.

After the shoot

Once we finish the shoot and you’ve headed home, we upload your images from the camera and back them up, then we prepare a set of proofs for you to view online. We like to get these to you as soon as we can, but it can take up to 7 days if we’re super busy. We’ll remove the duds (the ones where you were half-blinking, or where the focus wasn’t quite right), leave in some outtakes (accidental goofy expressions are a must), and send them to you to find the ones you love. There can be quite a few to look through, and we might suggest some of our favourites.

When you’ve made your selections for however many images we’ve agreed on, let us know, and we’ll get cracking! Also let us know if there were any in that set of our favourites that you didn’t like (eg you weren’t happy with your pose) so we don’t share those on social media.

Once you’ve made your selections, we’ll get to retouching and editing. We’ll use our artistic license when editing, playing with lighting composition and tone to make beautiful art.

If you’ve ordered digital files, we’ll deliver those within 7 days. If you’ve ordered prints, a print box, a framed print or a canvas, we’ll let you know about turnaround times; we use local suppliers and their delivery times can vary based on demand.

Questions?

If you have any questions at all, drop me a line at kris@imagesbyanderson.com, text me on 0413300020, or message on facebook/instagram.

See you at the session!