Tag: Ballet

Time Warp Tuesday: The Dancers

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I am reinterpreting Time Warp Tuesday again, by not posting an old image, but rather trying to go for a timeless feel. This image was taken at the Ballet dress rehearsal I mentioned in my previous post. By using black and white analog film I feel I was able to capture the timeless nature of the ballet; an artistic discipline that on one had is very proscribed and restricted, but on the other still manages to allow talented dancers to create something special within its confines. A ballet could be a hundred years old, but I don’t think I could ever use the term “period piece” to describe it.

By not trying to be “the new thing” art can liberate itself from the timeline.

Dancers

A Clunk In a Forest of Clicks

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This past Wednesday I (and about 50 other photographers) attended the dress rehearsal of a ballet in Markham (Actual ballet pictures will follow, once we get through a rather Byzantine approvals process). Most people in the room were shooting digital only, although I was shooting both film and digital. There was one other person there though shooting film, using an absolutely gorgeous Hasselblad 500C medium format camera.

At the Photo Shoot

As the ballet took place, the room was alive with the sounds of shutters clicking, including the sound of one shooter who felt he or she needed to shoot 8 frames per second to capture a dancer spinning. But every now and then, out of the din of digital shutters, CLUNK. It was the sound of the Hasselblad shooter firing her shutter.

It was a beautiful, authoritative, absolutely analog sound, and it was interesting to see other photographers turn their heads at the unfamiliar sound. Without trying to wax too poetical, the sound of the Hasselblad shutter firing expressed the soul of photography, more than the tinny little click of a DSLR shutter ever could.