Chelsey Goodman

At the start of November we were given the task to shoot the dancers from the college as they need images for their portfolio. At first we were told that we would have a dancer or two each but it turned out that both the 1st years and 2nd years needed pictures and so we ended up with 3-4 each. I was one of the lucky ones that only got 3 but it was still quite a challenge. Our brief was to produce a headshot, a half body shot and a full length shot for each dancer, both in studio and outside. They also had to show their personality at the same time.

Chelsey Goodman was my only 2nd year dancer. When I met her I got the impression that she wasn't interested and didn't want her picture taken. She offered little suggestion to what kind of style she wanted and how she wanted to portray herself. I therefore wasn't as enthusiastic as I should of been when it came to the shoot day. However to my surprise she came in very excited and was very easy to shoot. We each had an hours slot to shoot our 2nd year dancers on that day but I only needed half an hour which was helpful as it was a squeeze fitting everyone in for the day. The studio set up was two large softboxes at the front to light the dancer with flash. Two constant spots were on furthur back to light the background. I shot these on my Canon 450d with my 50mm f1.8 lens as it was relatively new to me at the time and I wanted to try it on portraits. I used the same camera and lens for the outdoors pictures. It was an overcast day and so the skys are all just blank white but I tried to change the sky to blue on one picture and with the tones of it it looked better white.


There was two headshots that I like. For the purpose of this brief I chose the first shot (top) as it shows her face better but I also liked the second one. The dance teacher also liked it alot and said that I did well as Chelsey can be quiet around new people so I was glad that she came out of her shell on the day of the shoot. This was my first experience taking pictures of a stranger and I really enjoyed it and I think that I have learnt quite a bit from it. I have made some errors in focusing etc but I have learned from that for next time.