2016 copyright Douglas Stockdale
A couple of weekends ago I was again the event photographer at the Orange County Museum of Art (OCMA) Family Day. Family Day at OCMA is a fun event for me to photograph candids of the children and their parents interacting with the surrounding art as well as the art projects that the OCMA team provide for the kids to work with.
Occasionally Family Day creates more creative opportunities for me with some of the performances that are provided in conjunction with this event. More so when the dance is contemporary and interpretive and I think the occasion then allows me experiment with more creative options.
To photograph the Re:borN Dance Interactive performance, I wanted to visualize the amazing energy of the performers, which for me is to select a slower shutter speed to allow some blurring. To further abstract the performance, I also deferred to black and white images.
For my part, I was fortunate to be “staff” and able to move away from the audience to less obstructive view point. In this case there was a large painting on the background wall that I thought might allow some interesting juxtapositions with the dancers. The painting was uniform enough that it also allowed the performers to create their own space. It also allowed me to place the performers within the OCMA physical context, which meet my client goals. To further enhance the visual perspective, I sat on the floor such that I was looking upward towards the performers and allow them to tower above the paintings frame (yes, a bit of a William Eggleston influence). In this case, having a 24 – 105 zoom allowed me to constantly adjust for the performers while they moved through their performances.
Nevertheless, for OCMA I provided a selection of color images. For Boroka Nagy, the Artistic Director of Re:born, she received both the color as well as my B&W.
Cheers!
Singular Images 