Argus Leader Photo

This is an image that ran in the Argus Leader Tuesday the 18th. There were several from my take that I liked for different reasons and the blog is a great place to share things that haven’t run, however, I thought discussing an image more viewers had seen might be a good way to talk about some of the process a photographer goes through. This image is a good example of anticipation, micro composition (to steal a phrase from Sam Abell) and patience. When you enter a scene you start to take a lot of things in. The mood, the scenery, the people. You begin to see where your image might come from. In this case, I quickly realized the black curtain as a clean, uncluttered background. As the excercise took place I saw that dancers were moving across my plain of view horizontally which would allow me to focus on one more easily than if they were moving toward me. The movements of the dancers’ bodies created interesting negative spaces and lines that could lead the eye in and around the picture. So I waited. There are several frames from this “scene”. But wanting each subject to live mostly unobstructed was key. This is that slice of time where faces and limbs and movement freezes with interesting foreground, mid ground, and background. This is the image from the sequence that everything came together. I feel i should have stayed here longer than i did. Sometimes excitement and adrenaline cloud my clarity. I learn something from every assignment. I can always do better. But this image was pleasing and I think it captures the feeling of the room.

- Melissa Sue Gerrits