I love working with dancers and admire the control they hold over their bodies and the expressions in their faces. They make my work easier, as I get to do what I love the most – shoot, and not worry about the posing.

Most recently I had the opportunity to work with the beautiful group from Rasdhwani. They are few of the best Bharatanatyam dancers I have ever seen and they perform regularly in Ahmedabad, most recently celebrating 25 years of dancing.

The idea behind the shoot was to highlight their form and shoot on black. If time permitted, I also wanted to shoot using white powder without making a mess of the place. Rasadhwani rented a location, got it covered entirely in black and I showed up with my gear.

I used Elinchrom 400 watt lights with two 24×24 softboxes on either side at the back and a beauty dish or sometimes 100cm Octa as the main light. The key is to avoid any light spill on the background. I had a huge place to move around so was able to achieve this without any grids. However, in my next such shoot, I would prefer to have egg crate grids on all diffusers. 

Canon 5d mkIII with 70-200 f4L shot at f4.0 @1/160 sec ISO 200. 

lighting-diagram-1419184189

Some more images…

We shot late in the evening till 1 am at night. I had a wonderful time shooting and they got fantastic shots. I was able to do only a few shots with the powder due to time constraints. Looking forward to our next shoot.
Thank you Chintan Patel, Koral Adenwala, Shivangee Vikram, Sachidanand Narayankar, Akshay Patel and Ashwini Nagarhalli.

Check out Rasadhwani’s website for more information about their dance group and also their facebook page.