How to Wow People with Your Dance Photography

I’m unsure if taking dance photography has improved my wildlife images or my wildlife photography has improved my dance. At the end of the day, both statements are true, as iron sharpens iron. 

About 20 years ago, before I dived into Wildlife Photography, I began my love affair with photography by taking photographs of my daughter’s dance competitions. She then chose a performance high school, majoring in dance and eventually musical theater. Her dance skills improved as did my photography skills, and the school asked me to photograph a Dance Concert for them. 

As you know, photography is not allowed at these types of shows. I thought this would be a perfect way to get live-action shots of my daughter dancing and for parents to have photos of their kids.   

Some of the challenges in shooting live dance and theater include freezing action and having a central point of focus to capture what’s going on without having an overwhelming number of performers in a frame.  

Photographing solos or duets is easiest because you know who your main subjects are, and then the focus is on capturing the most poignant moments of the performance. Whether it be leaping, body movements and positions, or interactions between the pair. I always pay attention to composition and keep the performers where they look the most pleasing without getting obsessive about it, knowing that cropping is simple enough.  

I’ve gotten reasonably good over the years, anticipating leaps and capturing those in full extension, which are some of my favorite photos to nail. It doesn’t hurt that those also sell the best to parents through an online gallery. 

Group scenes are a little more challenging as there’s always so much going on, and it’s easy to cut off a performer’s limb on the sides of the frame.  I almost always photograph the performance during the dress rehearsal. This allows me to be mobile in front of the stage or even shoot from the wings to get different angles.  

Since I’m seeing the show for the very first time while photographing it, I’ll ask the Dance instructors which number is coming up next, such as whether it is a solo, duet, or a large group number. If it’s a big group, I’ll start with my 28-70 and then obviously my 70 to 200 if it’s a solo, duet, or close to it. 

With the groups, I’ll pay attention to the choreography to figure out How the dancers are moving. I’ll start shooting wide until I get a feel for how the piece is going and then come in closer to isolate some of the key dancers in the performance. Almost always in group numbers. There are featured dancers and then supporting dancers. I also photograph supporting dancers one hundred percent.

I can imagine how frustrating it would be for a parent to visit my photo gallery and not see their child. And while I don’t do this for the money, that’s always a nice side benefit.  My primary inspiration in this type of photography for the school is for the parents and the performers to see and have these images for years.  My daughter graduated from there 16 years ago, and I still cherish those photographs of her.  

If you have been to live dance concerts or musical theater performances, you know how challenging the lighting can be when photographing them. I set up my camera for this pretty much like I set it up for wildlife photography. I always use back button focusing and Servo with face detection activated.

Always in full Manual mode. I’ll start at 2.8, 1/250, and ISO 3200, then adjust as needed. I’ll often crank up the ISO to 10,000 or even higher ‘cause I know these cameras can handle it no problem, especially with today’s noise reduction software in Lightroom or Topaz.

Lighting and scenes change rapidly during live productions, so I constantly modify my settings on the fly.  If I have too much light, my first go-to setting is to change my shutter speed, however… I’m always aware of banding in the scene due to LED lighting.  If I see that, I’ll try not to exceed a shutter speed 1/200.  

I tend to shoot with the usual shutter speed of between 1/160 and 1/400.  Artistically, if I need to slow it down to get movement, I’ll do that in certain situations, maybe down to 1/20 or 1/50.  I try to live with an aperture between 2.8 and 4.0 and ride my ISO like a mule!

For the longest time, I shot with two bodies, a 70-200 f2.8 on one and 24-70 on the other.  Since going mirrorless, I’ve only been shooting with my R3 paired with the RF70-200 f2.8 IS and RF28-70 f/2. I’ll also pack my bag with the EF300 f/2.8, 16-35, and EF135 f/2. 

I’ve gotten pretty good at swapping lenses in the middle of a performance without missing much action. I’ll even practice swapping lenses in the dark to challenge myself to see how fast I can do that. To help, I’ve put a thin piece of gaffer tape on the lens to mark where it lines up with the camera so I can do it by feeling instead of looking.  I also colored the gaffer’s tape with a silver Sharpie to make it easier to see when I look for the mark.