Group Shoot – Denyer.pro | Commercial, Dance and Poledance Photography

Flight Instructors 2018

denyerec — Mon, 16 Jul 2018 19:58:04 +0000

Now, it might seem like I shoot at lot at Flight Fitness and you’d be right – For a start Lauren keeps booking me and secondly they’re such an awesome bunch I’d probably keep turning up to shoot even if she didn’t (But don’t tell her that, OK?)

A split day across aerial and pole, with a bit of devilish (Hah) photoshopping in one of the photos to make Lauren up to look like the demon that she would have looked like if she’d remembered to bring the prosthetics and makeup… You see Lauren and two of her instructors (The wonderful Cakeface and the delightful Nana) will be performing a new cube triple act this year, and needed an image to start slapping on posters.

Delivered.

Also notable is Gemma C killing it on no fewer than 4 pieces of equipment – talk about multitasking. Trapeze, Silks, Lyra and Pole in a single shoot in several outfits. Commitment if ever I’ve seen it! An thoroughly enjoyable day in the company of 7 maniacs that really, really know their stuff – I can’t wait for the next one!

First Class Pole Student Shoot Autumn 2016

denyerec — Thu, 15 Sep 2016 15:07:30 +0000

The last big group shoot of the year finds me over in Melton with 1st Class Fitness and the superb Donna Gant.

Working at Donna’s studio has become so much easier with the improved pole assembly that let’s us work in the high central area of the main studio, and in contrast to the last time I shot white backdrops there it gave me more control, allowing me to sharpen up the results a little, ever tweaking the result a little each time. I still haven’t built up an overhead reflector assembly, but it’s getting there slowly. We also had a guest appearance from Kym Moore from PoleHog who was there to get some shots showcasing her awesome custom-made polewear, much of which the other performers on the shoot got to try out and take away!

One potential solution would be to use a low power light in a giant parabolic brolly, something I intend to experiment with on my next test shoot, as I’m still chasing the elusive wrap-light I get from Bliss Poledance…

Although mostly pole, we had to sneak a few hoop shoots in at the end before racing away to get to the Flight Fitness Christmas pole showcase. Good grief what a hectic weekend this one was!

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Flight Fitness September 2016

denyerec — Sat, 10 Sep 2016 15:05:58 +0000

Getting one last shoot in before Christmas, Lauren invited me over again to shoot with her and her fantastic group of poledance students.

With the clock ticking before the arrival of another child, I was back at Flight for a packed student shoot, again covering aerial hoop, pole and silks.

A new challenge was introduced in the form of Baby Princess Sparklepants – a beautful rescue greyhound who is now the pride and joy of Lauren. Mostly a placid beast, she did find interest in front of the camera on more than one occasion, leading to a couple of hillarious moments!

Although we’re shooting on white again with a familiar setup, it’s undergoing subtle tweaks and revisions not only on set but in the postprocessing approach, and this shoot yeilded some of my cleanest and in my opinion best shots on the setup to date.

The biggest problem with a refinement process like that, is you look back on the the older images from a few years ago and want to reshoot them all, as the improvements are quite startling. I might revisit some of the older shots to see if they can be brought into better shape with my improved post processing workflow, but obviously nothing can be done to update the lighting in old shots.

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Pole Athletes Megashoot

denyerec — Sat, 13 Aug 2016 14:31:27 +0000

Four days of absolute mayhem in Chesterfield at another Aerial and Poledance Photoshoot.

Experimenting with the white field look a little, I was up this weekend in Chesterfield shooting again with the wonderful Lorna Walker from Pole Athletes. Having just completed a refurbishment of her studio it was great to be back here to take advantage of the now-removable X-Poles and her newly kitted out aerial bay, which has plenty of height and just enough depth to get pretty much any results we want out of the silks and lyra.

If I thought the shooting was Homerian in its scale, that didn’t have a patch on the retouching. With 51 performers shot in total (!!!) and some enthusiastically sized orders from many on the shoot, I had my work cut out getting them delivered in time, especially heading into the Christmas season and a new baby on the way.

A standout from this shoot was Lynda B, who’s an avid motorcyclist and wanted to get some classic pinup poses with her beloved racer. Needless to say this presented a slightly different challenge to the usual shots, getting the bike into position, and then attempting to retouch out the axle stands was a really fun endeavour. Given the work required to get the axle stands out of the finished shot, the next time I’m faced with a similar task I’ll be sure to shoot more plates with the bike held by an assistant, to facilitate a more efficient retouching process. Live and learn!

Part One : Gallery

Part Two : Gallery

Legends: Lauren, Emily and Jamie

denyerec — Sat, 09 Apr 2016 14:24:22 +0000

When you get a call that involves the words “Emily Smith” and “Jamie Taylor”, from none other than the super awesome Lauren Red, you don’t stop to think, you just say yes.

Turns out that living legend Jamie Taylor and the absolutely crazy Emily Smith were up for a visit at Flight Fitness and wanted to shoot. No less than a combined amount of 9 hours travelling cross-country between them – it was a fantastic opportunity to shoot some absolutely fabulous performers.

A great shoot, running solo with my still Under-Construction flight case powering the operation – I really should write that up at some point. Being able to quickly deploy a workstation that has a solid backup strategy in place is invaluable, and so much easier for clients to review images on than squinting at the laptop screen!

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Circusmash Aerial Shoot

denyerec — Mon, 04 Jan 2016 14:17:05 +0000

Circusmash is an aerial arts and circus centre in the Midlands, UK, specialising in all kinds of circus arts training, from juggling and stiltwalking to aerial silks and hoop.

When I was asked by Liz to come and shoot with her and some of her training partners I wasn’t quite sure what to expect of the venue, but stepping through the door I instantly fell in love with it.

Based on a modernised Viking longhall concept, the Circusmash space is totally free from crossbeams, and super, super high. So high in fact that I topped out my backdrop stands with at least 3 metres to go, I couldn’t believe it. With absolutely no restrictions on height and space it really is an absolutely perfect venue to shoot in, which made setting up and lighting this small group shoot an absolute dream.

Nathaniel and Liz had a great 40’s sailor / navy theme going, and Charlie and Lisa nailed their period Flapper outfits and sports shots. All in all a really successful shoot, resuting in a easily a couple of my favourite aerial shots so far.

Honestly can’t wait to get back there to shoot more, such a great great space to work in!

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Flight Fitness Instructor Shoot 2015

denyerec — Sun, 15 Nov 2015 14:08:05 +0000

Shooting with the instructors at Flight Fitness is too much fun to be considered work. A talented and truly genuine bunch that are a joy to work with.

Shooting on white we got stuck right in to some of the crazier and more advanced moves that come up less frequently on the student shoots, simply due to the amount of training and flexibility they require.

We shot on silks, hoop and pole for pretty much the whole day – it’s easy to get carried away tweaking moves to get feet and hands “Just so” but when it’s so much fun and the sun is shining it simply doesn’t feel like work.

Retouching the shots after the fact, though, is aways the unseen labour which is the heavy price to pay for capturing so many awesome moves on camera.

Some fantastic poses from some fantastic people – always an absolute pleasure.

First Class Fitness Student Shoot 2015

denyerec — Sat, 03 Oct 2015 14:06:27 +0000

This time it’s another trip to 1st Class Pole in Melton, Leicestershire, to shoot the students of the dauntless trickster Donna Gant.

After running the dark setup on a previous shoot, I was asked to shoot it at Donna’s in the autumn, but as with many old industrial units there were beams. Lots of beams. While it’s not much of an issue on white backdrop shoots (Thanks to my big bag o’cloth to wrap the beams in white with) for dark backdrops that contain texture and a subtle spotlight, it’s impossible.

You could photoshop the beams out of every image but the time this would take would make the shots financially impractical for the performers, so we needed to come up with a better solution.

This arrived in the form of Donna’s partner Sam engineering a custom brace and bracket set that allows us to mount a pole nice and high in a beam-free zone, giving me both the height I need to get unobstructed shots and buying me loads more width to work with when it comes to positioning lights. Win-win all round.

With the mounting assembly shock-load tested by Sam we were ready to get set up and start shooting, loads of space to work, pristine black paper and a horde of amazing performers made this a really great shoot!

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Bliss Dance Student Shoot 2015

denyerec — Sun, 26 Jul 2015 14:05:40 +0000

July finds me off to see Amanda at Bliss Dance, Nuneaton, to shoot her students in a really fun afternoon session.

Due to the height of the studio it was necessary to swap one of the lights out from the standard Elinchrom BXRi to a Nikon Speedlight due to space allowances, but because it was a smaller shoot than normal running on batteries wasn’t an issue!

Another consequence of the reduced height at Bliss is that the white ceiling acts as a huge, delicious, beautiful fill reflector. I didn’t pin it down at first, but editing the Bliss photos they’re eaisly some of my favourites with respect to the fabulous wrapping light. As a lot of studios have much higher vaulted or flat ceilings I don’t get this effect anywhere else and need to work out a way to simulate it with a suspended reflector of some kind!

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Flight Fitness Student Shoot 2015

denyerec — Thu, 09 Jul 2015 14:04:13 +0000

Summer draws to a close as I head back to Flight Fitness for another enormous student pole and aerial photoshoot.

This time on the running order we not only had pole, but also aerial hoop (Lyra), silks, and a special guest star in the form of Lauren's infamous Cube 'O Pain. Seriously that thing is just excruciating no matter how you go about sitting in it or hanging off it!!

Organisation on behalf of the girls at the shoot was excellent; everyone was well prepared and on their side ran brilliantly. One thing that we'd not accounted for, however, was the time that would be gobbled up by equipment changes… Everyone had been grouped up with shoot buddies of similar ability and on the correct equipment but when it comes to Lyra, if you're too tall to fit in the hoop then you're just too tall to fit in the hoop. This means you have to swap it out and, if you're alternating shots due to fatigue, means you're up and down the stepladder on a regular basis.

Compounding this is different moves require either a single or double point mounting hoop! By the time you have different sized hoops with different mounts, as well as performers wishing to wear different outfits for different moves that use different hoops, it all becomes a logistical quagmire!

The solution was to simply eat into the scheduled breaks and lunchtime so that we didn't impact the performers at the shoot, but it was a valuable lesson to learn when scheduling people into shoots in the future. There is absolutely no way I will let someone leave without all of their shots in the bag, even if it means staying on set until midnight.

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