Ballerina and Graffiti

A couple of weeks ago my sister-in-law was showing me the photos they had received from his football team. They were terrible. I didn't expect much because most of the photos done for sports teams are more about quantity than quality. I understand that they are there to make money, but there are many little things that you could do to make the photos a little better. It got me thinking about redoing his photos in a fashion that they would be pleased to hang on their wall. So I planned a shoot with him after one of his games in Salt Lake. As we were going to be shooting between some buildings and on the street I wanted him to be sweaty and dirty. I wanted a gritty look. I under exposed the background by two stops and cross lit him with four strobes. He literally jumps off the page. Seeing his photo gave me the idea to do a series of these photos. Taking athletes and putting them in strange and alien locations for how they are dressed or the sports they play.

One of these photos that I decided to do was place a ballerina in front of this wall of graffiti. I was looking for contrasts. An elegant and soft ballerina on the street and in front of this very urban wall seemed like a great idea. So over a weeks time I planned the shoot with my darling niece and sister and the company that owned the parking lot. Early Saturday morning we picked up my niece and went down to the location that I had picked. All week we have had nothing but sunshine and temperatures in the 80's. Wouldn't you know it, that today it decided to rain. It was off and on, but we decided to give the weather a try and see if we couldn't get the shot I was looking for. You can see from some of the shots that I had plastic bags placed over the strobes until I was ready to shoot. I actually left the bag over the top of the beauty dish. The rain let up just enough that we were able to get the photos that I wanted. McKenna was awesome and a real trooper to bare the weather in her not so warm outfit. Here are a few behind the scenes photos. I love seeing these photos on other sites. I will shortly post the final pictures.