The problem with sharp

A perfectly frozen dancer looks like a statue. The photograph is technically correct and completely dead, because the thing that makes dance worth watching is the movement between the positions.

What we changed

We shot at 1/250 rather than 1/2000, and lit with strobe rather than continuous. The flash duration freezes the body; the slower shutter lets the trailing edge of the limb and the fabric smear just enough to say which way it was going.

Choreographing the frame

• Emma marked the jump three times so we could find the apex.
• We set focus manually on the mark rather than tracking.
• Fifteen frames per position, of which perhaps two are usable — the apex lasts about sixty milliseconds.

The keeper rate on a shoot like this is under five percent, and that is the shoot going well.

Twenty-two final images, printed as a portfolio book for auditions.