SATURDAY AFTERNOON I found myself kneeling on the floor of the Faribo West Mall to shoot photos of young dancers performing.
If my orthopedic surgeon had observed the way I crouched and bent my hip, he would have scolded me, even warned me that I could pop my 3 ½-year-old artificial right hip right out of place. Such an admonition would be well-deserved.
But in those photographic moments, I forget about the health consequences and pursue shots from a perspective that best tells the story. With kids, that typically means I get down on their level, on the floor. Now getting back up, well, that can be more of a challenge.
Let me show you three photos from that dance performance. They’re not your typical “proud parent” type shots and I’m certain more than one parent questioned why I was scooting around on the floor of the mall.
You won’t see the dancers’ faces. Rather, you’ll notice the stance, the clasp of hands and other details that tell a story from a broader perspective. See for yourself and read how, with my minor photo editing skills, I tweaked each photo.
It is the pose of this little girl, holding her hands close, eyes fixed on the older dancer, that show her admiration, her "I want to dance just like her someday," wonderment. In photo editing, I cropped the image just a wee on the left to cut out a distracting red EXIT sign. I sharpened the photo slightly and lowered the saturation of the yellow. While an entire crowd of onlookers ringed the two dancers, in this frame I opted to focus solely on the two dancers to emphasize the magic I saw between them. It was as if they were all alone in the mall, at a private dance lesson.
Here I crouched as low as I could without lying on the floor to capture this moment. This scene takes in all aspects of the performance from performer to the audience to those two little girls who look forward to someday dancing solo. The only editing change was a minor sharpening of the photo.
When the older girls took to the mall dance floor, I wanted to showcase the movement to tell their story and to truly engage you, the reader. So I set a slower shutter speed and focused on their legs. I cropped the frame on the right and then edited the distracting colors from the image. The sepia tone adds to the dreamy, artsy quality of the photo.
AFTER THE PHOTO shoot of the dancers, I stopped by my local public library where I found a photography guidebook that I’d highly recommend, Expressive Photography: The Shutter Sisters’ Guide to Shooting from the Heart.
Check out the Shutter Sisters’ photography blog by clicking here.
Their book is packed with tips about lighting, perspective, photo editing, composition and more. It’s one of the best photography books I’ve read.
And don’t you just love the cover?
© Copyright 2012 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
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