Photography of the Ballet

Hello, and welcome to my web site on ballet photography. I have been photographing various types of dance on and off for more than 30 years, and I am particularly drawn to the composition and design that I find in ballet photography. Some of my ballet images have been included in a number of one person and group exhibits of fine art B&W photography over the years.

Some of my most interesting photographs have resulted from working with The Washington Ballet, beginning in 1981. A problem with working with an established ballet company can be that most or all of the company dancers are under contract to the organization, and so are not free to sign a release for private photographs. Therefore, my work in the studio is mostly with students from the Washington School of the Ballet or from local dance schools, selecting dancers that I feel might be particularly photogenic. For a number of years with the Washington Ballet I was fortunate in being able to get limited releases for some of my dress rehersal photographs, in exchange for allowing them to use the selected photographs for their publicity and promotional uses. These releases allow me to exhibit and sell these photographs.

You may note in reading this web site, that I include more details than might be usual in a normal "fine art" web site. This is due to my dedication to education and teaching, and my desire to include details here that might help my readers (some of which I assume will be dancers or parents or friends of dancers) take better photographs of dancers they know. In addition, I am sure that a number of students from the Washington School of Photography will also be looking at the web site, and I want to be helpful to them as well.

This web site initially will be set up in a very simple manner. I first have a number of photographs of ballet students or individual dancers, taken in a dance studio or photography studio. Following these images will be a series of photographs of the Washington Ballet, taken during their dress rehersals. Many of these latter photographs were taken in the early or mid-1980's, when Choo San Goh was the resident choreographer for the Washington Ballet.

One studio photograph that I particularly like I call "Dancing Feet". It was taken in the studio of a local dance school, with several of their students who had asked me to photograph them for their high school yearbook. One of the photographs I took was of the ballet shoes, feet and leg warmers of one of these teenage dancers, which had a special look I really liked. I then printed the image using a special "chemical etch" procedure that gives the photograph a look like a charcoal etching (this is using wet chemical processing). It has been one of my most popular ballet photograph to date, having sold a number of large fine art prints to various dancers, collectors and ballet enthusiasts. It is also by far the most difficult print to produce that I have ever made, due to the very time intensive "chemical etch" procedure. I have included a digital image copy of it below, however the digital transformation procedure does not quite provide the same three dimensional effect as the original silver halide image; even so, I still think that it has an interesting look. I am still trying to find a digital effects program that will provide me with a similar effect for my digital images, but so far have not been totally successful.

Dancing Feet

Several other studio images are included below, taken in my photography studio. These are often of ballet students, but occasionally I do get the opportunity to photograph professional dancers, if they currently are not under contract. Some of my most recent ballet photographs have been taken in the large studio at the Washington School of Photography (WSP) (Bethesda, MD), where I am a faculty member and Technical Director. I have have been teaching classes and workshops at WSP for almost 25 years. A recent addition to my workshop schedule at WSP will be a one day workshop in ballet photography, with the first workshop to be held in early summer of 2006.

It is interesting to note that every dancer has a different "look", and it can be exciting to work with a particular dancer, experimenting with different techniques, lighting, and poses in the studio until I can a obtain a photograph that captures the images I see in my head. For the photographers and photography students out there, most of the studio photographs were generally taken with studio electronic flash lighting, with the exception of the "Dancing Feet" image above, which was taken with available window light. Of course, flash photography of any kind is never allowed during dress rehersals or performances, for dancer safety reasons.

The Swan Lake photograph above was taken during a dress rehearsal of the Young Dancers ofthe Washington Ballet. The Young Dancers were a preprofessional group of senior students from the Washington School of the Ballet. This photograph was taken the day prior to the start of their autumn series at the Lisner Auditorium. I love the way that Stephanie looks, like an angel floating in the air. The WB used this photograph in a number of their publications.

Below are a number of B&W photographs from my many years of photographing the Washington Ballet, including several that are in the permanent collection of the Valparaiso University Museum of Art. In 1994 I had an extensive exhibit of my ballet photography at the University, comprised of more than 40 of my B&W ballet images, printed to approximately 11"x14" and matted to 16"x20". That exhibit resulted in their selection of four of my photographs for their extensive collection of contemporary photography.

All of the photographs below were taken during dress rehersals of the Washington Ballet, so opportunities for experimenting with the lighting were not available. These photographs were taken with available lighting, which was a combination of tungsten stage lighting and carbon arc spotlights. Since these photographs were taken a number of years ago, they were all taken with film cameras and processed and printed personally. A fast B&W film was used (often 35mm Tri-X) and usually pushed processed to ISO 1600 speed. At that film speed I could usually shoot at about1/250 second at f2.8 (if all the lights were on fully). The lenses that I found to be most useful for these shoots were a Nikon 85mm f1.4 lens, a Nikon 105mm f1.8 lens, and the excellent Nikon 80-200mm f2.8 zoom lens. The additional visibility available when using the f1.4 lens helped considerably in focusing on a moving subject in the relatively dim light. I use these same lenses currently with my Fuji S2 Pro digital SLR camera.

When photographing the Washington Ballet I particularly liked the choreography of Choo San Goh, including in particular the highly reflective unitards that he often used on the dancers, both male and female. I found that they photographed extremely well, and gave a dramatic look and composition to the images. The reflection of light off the shiney cloth helped to define the body shapes against the dark backgrounds, a point often missed in many other productions. His demise was a real loss to the ballet community and to the Washington Ballet in particular.

Finally, below is a photograph of the entire Washington Ballet Company, made in 2000. That year I was asked to photograph the entire company and many of the individual dancers. This photograph is particularly significant to me because it includes Amanda McKerrow, guest soloist, who was a rising star with the WB when I first started to photograph them in the 1980s.

I hope that you have enjoyed my ballet photographs. Thank you for visiting this web site with my ballet photography, and I hope you will come back to visit me again. I have just started this site, so will be expanding it regularly with new and additional images of the ballet. If you are interested in additional types of photography, I invite you to visit my general photography web site at donbeckerphoto.com, with many images of different aspects of my photography.

Also, please take a moment and sign my guestbook, found here: View my guestbook It would be nice if you indicated whether you are a dancer or photographer as well, even if you are just starting out. Thanks.

Don Becker

Contact Information: For questions or information about my ballet photography feel free to contact me by e-mail at donb(at)ballet-photography.com.

Also, please visit my general photography website at donbeckerphoto.com.

Click here for information on the Washington School of Photography. Their website includes all of the classes and workshops offered including dates, times, and costs, and allows online registration.

Links: For information about the Washington Ballet and their production schedule visit their website at the WashingtonBallet.org.

An invaluable link to an excellent forum on questions and answers for all things ballet is Ballet Talk. Once there, just follow the prompts to visit the appropriate sites for ballet parents and enthusiasts, or for ballet dancers.