Photographer : Leif Norman : Verge Dancers

Winnipeg Manitoba Canada, Contemporary Dancers, Verge, 
Long Exposure Experiements, 
March.2.2012   www.leifnorman.net

Verge is an emerging artist company in association with Winnipeg Contemporary Dancers (WCD).  It is full of talented emerging professionals who work daily with Artistic Director Brent Lott, in preparation for a stage show.  It is a programme to help the School of Contemporary Dancers jump to a career as professional dancers.

Leif Norman says that his "idea was to use a dark neutral density filter, and a tripod, and capture a full hour of dance movement in one photographic image". But of course, that didn't work, he says, "everything looked very ghostly and cloudy even at 7 minutes".  He then shot everything at one second to 5 seconds as it created nice streaks and wiggly limbs.

I chose to show this first image because I think it just looks beautiful.  It may be because of the brightly coloured light shining, making the floor a bright pink and purple, but also because of how the dancers are moving.  The long exposure is probably around 3/4 seconds long, and the two dancers on stage show different motions. I love how the dancer nearer the front had moved quite a lot within the exposure time whereas the other dancer behind looks as if she has turned once. Its all experimentation with dancers, as you don't know exactly what they are going to do. But sticking to this length of exposure should come out with interesting results.

Here are some more of the photographs from the hour of dance.  I love how colourful they all look when next to each other.  The coloured light is obviously coming from the stage show lights.  It has actually made me thought, why haven't I tried this before, my mum works in a music centre that have huge halls that hold lots of different dance lessons and stage shows, I could have easily tested this out.

The main focus for me is the body movements as I am looking at how the body moves throughout dance and am capturing it through long exposures.  With the amounts of images I have seen so far with this subjects I know i am more than capable of producing long exposed dance images, but they will not have the bright colours like these, because i will not have the space, or stage for the performer, nor the bright stage show colour lights.

These two images below look very strange, eerie and mysterious.  They both have an exposure time of 7 minutes.  7 minutes is a lot longer than people think when it comes down to long exposed dance photography.  Dancers move quite quickly, therefore, whatever movements repeat the same positions and floor space in the 7 minutes will all blur together into one big blur.  Which is what has happened in these photos.  Both have a blur centre stage, of one or more dancers, moving around and around in the exposure time.  This is also effective but it can sometimes be too much.  Shorter times can have sharper motion images.

And lastly, the three images here also looks eerie and very ghostly.  This is due to the colours used or the turning of colour to black and white.  Black and white with this type of photography automatically makes the mood creepy and mysterious, whereas the colour ones seem a lot more upbeat.  These colours are still very effective, and I like trying to see how they have moved but testing colour and black and white is all a testing process. 

Yet again some more images and a photographer with work exactly relevant to my ideas, I need to look at a few more to see where my project takes me and how I will narrow down the dancer and what to do  in my studio.  I have the technique ready, I just need the dancer and then I can start properly.