About the image

Image taken of beautiful Ukranian dancer Tanya Kafedzhy at my studio in North Carolina. Our goal was to freeze her motion and we made several images of her dancing (especially jumping) because the shape of her hands and body showed the high skills that a ballet dancer must have even while performing very physically tasking movements. I used a large Westcott 7-Feet Silver Parabolic Umbrella (with a Flashpoint XPLOR 600) with difusser pointing down and above the model at a slight angle (not fully horizontal), about 4 ft away from the background, to enhance light fallout, a Westcott Rapid Box 24″ Beauty Dish (with a Flashpoint StreakLight 360) as key light camera left, and a Silver rectangular reflector camera right in order to bounce some light back into the model and soften the shadows (as seen on the BTS images). For the background I used a grey paper roll which allowed me to create a “cyclorama” effect, by extending background later on Photoshop (this was way before the AI tools today available, done fully manual).