It is always a pleasure to photograph talented dancers and the photo shoot at the end of August was no exception. For this I was commissioned to go to a little town called Rovigo, situated in the beautiful Italian countryside, to photograph a student who has just entered her final year at the prestigious Royal Ballet Lower School, White Lodge. As the client is still under the age of 16, I have had to wait for permission to be granted in order to show you the lovely classical ballet images we achieved on the shoot. I have now received this permission and am delighted to be able to share with you these wonderful images by a truly talented young lady.
Rovigo, situated just 1 hour outside of the river city of Venice, was truly stunning with pear orchards and long grass fields surrounding the village. The brief set by the dancer’s parents was to achieve great classical ballet images to show on their daughter’s new blog, http://all4ballet.com/ , and to use as audition photographs for the upcoming auditions for schools around the world. After much deliberation through email and phone calls we decided that in order to get a variety of images we would spread the photo shoot over two different venues. The first was a studio where the client studied before attending the Royal Ballet School’s White Lodge and the other, a charming little theatre in the centre of Rovigo. Two very different venues producing very different results. Results however, that the client loved and that is what you strive for as a photographer.
My wife, Christie Bell, a former ballet dancer and student of the Royal Ballet School, attended the photo shoot with me to help the aspiring student achieve a good classical line. The sharing of her expertise and knowledge is apparent in the photographs on this blog, as she encouraged the dancer’s talent to shine through. With the audition process fast approaching for the young dancer, Christie could help her with the hard task of choosing the right college and how to get noticed in an audition. They also talked for hours about how White Lodge has changed in the last 15 years, which was fascinating for me, as until recently I had never been to The Royal Ballet School. We are now extremely good friends with the client and her family and will be following her career with much enthusiasm in the future.
Please find below my favourite images from the beautiful photo shoot in Italy.
