Dance

A recent wedding (which was fabulous by the way) was a feast for the camera's eye, and I thought you might like to share the inspiration. Trying to catch movement is always a difficult thing with out just getting in a blurry mess. Actually blur is a key factor which animators tried to indicate with a couple of little marks at points of movement like the heels of a dancer or tail end of a rocket. Well actually that's not quite right as the tick marks were there to indicate more frames should be added to fill out the action sequence, but it did become a symbol for movement that people copy in cartooning.

Long time exposures with a small iris opening on a camera can capture movement beautifully and it's possible to experiment so that you get just the right amount of sharpness (on still and slow moving parts of the picture) mixed with speedy blur. Black and white photographs really are the forté for this but you can do it in colour too... hmm must try some colourful fairground scenes :)

Painting the idea of movement was done really well by Monet in his picture of a lady battling with a blowy brolly, capturing the motion of the wind by it's effect on an object, be it skirts of fabric or the umbrella itself.



















One thing I've never managed to capture is the way a field of long grass ripples in waves when the wind is blowing across it. Photographs don't seem to get it right so maybe painting the idea of it might work... perhaps in a vanGogh style.

Anyway these are my two different styles of dancing pic. I think any painting I take from these will be just totally swirling and blurry just to take it that one step further :)































Would love to see what you can come up with to represent the movement of dancing...