Ballet Photography: Studio Session

I started photographing ballet in the early ’90s while working for The Charlotte Observer.

At the time, much of my time was spent photographing Atlantic Coast Conference and professional sports. But I was immediately taken with the artistry and athleticism of the dancers. A passion was born.

Fast forward to the present and much of my time is spent photographing brides and grooms, marketing materials and corporate executives. But, as anyone who has followed our blog for a period of time would note, I’ve never stopped photographing the amazing dancers of North Carolina Dance Theatre. It is one of few things I do purely because I want to.

While I’ve always enjoyed the challenge and discovery of photographing live performance, I have also wanted to experiment with capturing some of these amazing athletes in the studio.

The planets aligned and I had the opportunity to work at a friend’s amazing studio and the idea came to life.

I want to thank my friends Kevin and Teresa Chelko for giving me the opportunity to work in their beautiful studio. Kevin is one of the premier food photographers in the region and Teresa is a talented food stylist – what a great combination. And we all attend Lake Forest Church in Huntersville.

And I also had the good fortune of working with two amazing NCDT dancers: Alessandra Ball and Sarah Hayes Watson. Both have appeared on this blog many times and we are very excited to be photographing Alessandra’s wedding to Michael in May. You can see some of their engagement photos here.

Thanks to you Alessandra and Sarah: it was such a pleasure working with you.

Keep an eye out because we will be doing some more of these shoots in the near future.