Workshop review: Portrait and dance

Portrait and Dance Workshop with Aaron Key

By Paul Whitham LPSNZ

The fourth event in the 2021 PSNZ Workshop Series saw us travel to Invercargill in the Deep South for a session on portraiture and dance. PSNZ partner Sony supported our tutor Aaron Key to fly south, along with a large amount of studio lighting gear. Photo Warehouse Dunedin also loaned us a Godox three-light studio lighting setup and four lightstands.

Our models were provided by La Muse studios under the guidance of Bella Roberts. We had three dancers (Brooklyn, Anna & Amber) in the morning and four in the afternoon (Libby, Ella, Rosa and Lucy).

The workshop was held in the Scottish Hall in central Invercargill and was a perfect location for us. There was a large area where we could place two complete studio sets while still having plenty of space to move around safely. One was on a white seamless paper backdrop, using the three-light kit. The second used a single light and a cloth backdrop along with a white/ black reflector to help create more moody images.

The elevated stage, with its dark curtains, provided a perfect space for the third setup, which used LED lighting to capture movement. Unlike the other two sets, where we shot at 1/125sec, the cameras on this station used 3-4 second exposures.

It took Aaron and me nearly 90 minutes to make the three setups operational before the eleven participants arrived. The heaters in the entrance and main hall had been left on overnight, so we were very comfortable despite it being very cold outside. I was particularly grateful that when my boots decided to fall apart just before the start, I could spend the rest of the day in socks only. After the initial briefing, Aaron got straight into teaching by working his way around each of the three lighting stations, explaining what the lights were doing and which settings were most appropriate at each station.

The group was then split into six pairs, with three pairs shooting while three took a break. Within each pair, one person shot for ten minutes with the other person as assistant. Aaron timed proceedings so that everyone had a fair share of shooting the three dancers there for the morning.

In the afternoon, we swapped out the backdrop on the single light setup and positioned two backlights on the white seamless one to light the backdrop rather than act as rim lights on the dancer.

In the third setup, we introduced a speedlight that was fired at the end of the time the shutters were open. You usually do this by setting the camera to “rear curtain” flash. Unfortunately, the trigger only did this on some of the cameras, so we flicked to an alternative approach with the assistant firing the flash manually. This entailed a lot of trial and error, but most people appeared to take usable shots in the end.

By the end of the day, everyone seemed very happy with the workshop and what they had learned. The dancers all had fun as well, and they are looking forward to receiving their prints.

Once again, thanks to Aaron and Sony for making this workshop possible.

Gallery - Workshop Participants’ Photos

By Jo Broadhead LPSNZ

By Kim Faconer

By Kim Salmond McKechie

By Tania Mackie