On Location in Washington DC
Do you see what I see?
May 15, 2017
Water-Water Everywhere
September 5, 2017I had 4 beautiful dancers from the Washington Ballet, my “ten page photo permit” in my backpack, and an idea in my head. My idea was to update the Beatles Abbey Road album cover with classical ballet dancers with the Capital Building in the background.
The location I found was on Pennsylvania Ave. This would put the Capital in the background. I wanted long shadows on the street so we waited until late afternoon to shoot. I did not have the picture of the album cover with me so I asked the dancers if they ever heard of Abbey Road. My 1 Chinese, 2 Brazilian, and 1 American dancer all nodded their heads and went into separate descriptions of it. YEA! So next we started rehearsing the leg positions on the sidewalk. Notice my perfect Ballet Form :)
Next, we worked on the arm positions. It took several tries for the dancers to get their arms at the same positions and angles.
The dancers continued to rehearse on the sidewalk until we were all comfortable with the count and the timing. The pose is a jump. The dancers will be in the air and for this to be evident, I wanted shadows on the street that would plainly show that the dancers were in the air. Alas, the clouds moved in and the outlook was not good. Eventually, I decided that the sun was not going to cooperate so we waited for the traffic to clear, and we moved into the street for the shot. Here are my assistant’s shots.
For the final shot, I worked on the shadows in Photoshop but short of actually creating the shadows, which I would never do, this final shot is my version of BALLET ABBEY ROAD.
