The Ballet Pupil (or: "All Beginnings Are Difficult")

LaFoto

Just Corinna in real life
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Took this a while ago when once more I was invited to take photos of the rehearsals. Light was boring to the max. Unfortunately... :(
 
Cropped too close? Boring all in and about itself? Ugly people? Awful light (yes, the light WAS awful!)
 
Think you're right, the crop maybe a little tight.

I feel for you with that lighting, It must have been really frustrating, especially when you are gifted such a great opportunity to shoot and interesting subject as ballet (puts you in mind of Edgar Dagas) but then you have to deal with awful artificial lighting :( .. Still I think you managed as well as you could be expected here LaFoto
 
Yes the light was bad, but the people are not ugly. I think part of it may be the expressions. The girl just seems really bored, like she doesn't want to be there at all (and is not listening to the instructor).

Just my opinion though....
 
You are not too wrong there, both of you: the crop IS too close (I feel the same), the light WAS awful, and the girl WAS bored. She's one of those students in that class who is really good, but also quite a bit full of herself and she hates to be corrected by her teacher. So if that conveys somehow, then a truth transpires that neither girl nor teacher would really have wanted to transpire, I guess ;) .
 
The instructor looks kind of scary as well as the previously mentioned apparent mood of the instructed, she looks slightly upset or frightened as well creating the illution that ballet is not fun to do defeating your purpose, or atleast what I assume was your purpose...:( But all in all catches their moods quite well, thats what caught my eye, any way.
 
The teacher looks "scary" you say ... does that mean "scared" or "scaring"?
If you knew the person, you'd never think this, but THIS is what comes across? Oh dear! :(
 
eyes, girl is looking at the camera and teacher straight forward, IMO it would better if the girl to be look forward too or at less not the camera
 
That's THIS girl for you, Jeff. The teacher is trying to correct her posture by looking into the mirror at the end of the room, and the girl is supposed to watch it all and move or put herself accordingly, but she only notices that I'm taking a photo! :D
 
The teacher looks "scary" you say ... does that mean "scared" or "scaring"?
If you knew the person, you'd never think this, but THIS is what comes across? Oh dear! :(

What I think she meant and I see this as well is that the instructor has an intimidating look to her. Such is an element of photography though, you are showing an image of a person whom we do not know and the impression we get is based soly on what is visual and how we the viewer interpret what we see. Now I don't know much about German entertainment (Movies, cartoons and whatnot) but it prolly does not help that I can distinctly remember that on several different occasions in American animated movies and standard television cartoons where ballet instructors where depicted as a "nasty, mean old bat" stereotype. This stereotype influences the way we inturpret her facial expressions paired with the pupils reaction without a doubt simply because we do not know the woman and the ideaology has been in common culture here for decades.
 
Well, this instructor is a Turkish woman ... ;)
 
Took this a while ago when once more I was invited to take photos of the rehearsals. Light was boring to the max. Unfortunately... :(

Hi LaFoto,

Have you tried correcting the colour cast in Elements (or whatever you use)? Give it a try and then try converting it to black and white. Quite often converting pictures you don't like in colour to black and white makes a huge difference. Post up the result if you do :)
 

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