In my last post I mentioned how I’ve struggled for years to capture the essence of a dancer in a single frame. These are more attempts in this ongoing quest.

I started by wrapping dancers in LED lights. I had four different strips of LEDs, placing each strip on a different section of their body: leg, trunk, arm, and head. For the initial sequence I had the four strips all set to pulse through the whole color spectrum. Depending on how long the exposure was and how dynamic the dancers movement was determined what kinds of colors and shapes were created. I found that if the exposures were 5 seconds or longer the lights filled in to a bluish-white light, which was less interesting, so I directed them to move high to low and side to side as I snapped off 2 and 3-second exposures. I also tried out using my fungus-filled lens on a few of the frames, resulting in the hazy glow that you can see.

In the next sequence I set the LED strips to solid colors. Sometimes I turned them all to the same color, such as red. Other times I had each strip on a different solid color. I found the latter to be the most dynamic so far as it allows you to better see which parts of the dancer’s body made which shape.

After that I set all the LEDs to the same color and then added two gelled-strobes, placed on either side of the dancer in order to illuminate them separate from the lines of movement. The trick was then to pop the flash at the precise moment that the dancers were in a flattering pose, such as with an arm or leg fully extended. After shooting this way for a bit I found it the most helpful to take the flash trigger off of my camera and hold it in my hand. That way I could start the exposure whenever I wanted and wait for the perfect pose to manually pop the flashes.

For the final iteration of these experiments I implemented a smoke machine to see how the smoke would capture the moving lights. I started with the strobes placed to the sides as I did before but ultimately decided to place them behind her, aiming back toward the camera to act as dual suns, shining through the haze.

The more I play with long exposures and LEDs the more possibilities come to mind, which I’m really excited to explore.