Circus Performer, Shoot 2

I've been looking to take some cool portraits of circus performers all summer. Since the Philadelphia School of Circus Arts is close by, I've been trying to shoot aerialists. Yesterday I shot with T. Lawrence Simon.

I was trying to capture motion, produce some portraits with his favorite apparatus as well as portray his personality.



In this picture, I really liked the use of negative space as well as the serious look he was using. Sort of like Atlas, holding the weight of the world on his shoulders, T. is posing with the hoop, his favorite apparatus.

To keep with the serious tone, I lit this with a softbox high to camera right and a silver reflector for fill camera left. The wall in the background is a light purple which became gray since it was not lit by the softbox.



T. was telling me that the reason he chose the hoop as his aerial specialty was to spin. Even as a child, he loved to spin around. I wanted to catch him spinning, and be able to show motion at the same time.

To do this, I chose a slow shutter speed, in this case 1/20th of a second, and aimed a narrow spot of strobe at his face. To narrow the beam, I attached a grid to the light and I tried to trigger the flash as his face moved around. I have a lot of shots of his back.

Lastly, I wanted a portrait that was lighter than the first one. To do this, I knew I wanted a white background which I achieved by hitting the brick wall behind him with a lot of light. This made the wall go white. I got some reflected highlights on T by shooting with a meter reading that equaled my exposure reading behind him. I then set a light with a grid to that reading and aimed it at his face. Here's the result.



You can see the entire set of photos here