Ballet Blur

For the past several years I have photographed the Santa Cruz Ballet Theatre's production of the Nutcracker (my daughter is a dancer in the company). The dancers warm up on stage at times during rehearsals and before shows and I take the opportunity to take a few blurs.



I shot this hand held and by stopping down to adjust for exposure time. This one was taken at f/9 for a 1.3 second exposure. Noise reduction and toning (normal processing).

Thanks for looking. Happy New Year, everyone!

Cheers,

-Michael-

This nicely shows the movements and the various positions of arms and legs. I like that she is on one side and he on the other--nice balance. The simple background works well to set off the dancers. If I had one wish, it would be to have a clearer image of the faces of the dancers, but I doubt that is possible given the situation.

Hi, Michael, good to see you in OOTB again! I've always loved your ballet images and I like this one too. What are the horizontal lines that run across the image? I like them but I can't imagine what they are. I hope we see more of your images in 2017:5

Thanks, Anita & Cheryl! This was a longer exposure that captured the movement from side to side as the dancers came together but too long for any unblurred view of their faces (they were still enough for perhaps 1/3 of a second to make out their faces at the end). I'll post a shorter exposure shot that I have that captures the male dancer's face while the ballerina is spinning. The long lines are the seams in the special flooring they use to dance on taped down and the short lines are floor markings to help guide the dancer's positions on stage (or markings left by the dancers usually from the rosin they use on their shoes) blurred by a short pan as this was taken hand held.

Cheers,

-Michael-