Ballerina Brittany

My latest photo shoot was of the lovely Durban-based ballet dancer Brittany Goldswain at Le Domaine in Hillcrest.

When I met Brittany a few months ago, and she mentioned that she is a ballet dancer, I didn’t hesitate to ask her if she’d like to do a photo shoot. I have loved ballet since I was a little girl but I never got the opportunity to do it myself, so I have always admired ballerinas and skilled dancers. Brittany enthusiastically agreed, and a few months later, we finally managed to line up our schedules and make it happen.

Brittany suggested Le Domaine as a location for the photos – this tranquil living estate has a lot of visual variety, and an outdoor amphitheatre, where we took some of the afternoon’s shots. Thanks to Brittany’s aunt for getting permission for us!

It’s often tricky to shoot under bright, midday sun, which creates intense shadows over the subject. Luckily, the amphitheatre stage is half under cover, so I played around a bit with shaded and sunlit shots as Brittany did a series of ballet leaps. The timing of shots with such dramatic movement is crucial, and trying to get the subject in the right place against the backdrop during the jump takes a bit of trial and error, and a lot of patience. Thanks, Britt for being tireless!

Getting the chance to photograph a ballet dancer was so incredible for me – watching Brittany do her jumps and poses inspired me and made me want to go home and learn to dance and to become super flexible (I have been working on my flexibility for the past 5 months).

For the still, posed shots, we had to look around for shady spots with interesting backgrounds. There is a lot of improvisation that happens on shoots like this, and you have to be creative and resourceful in a short amount of time. I was also stressing about Brittany’s ballet pointes (shoes), which are very expensive to replace, so we had to choose our terrain carefully.

It was great working with a model who could nail whichever pose I required, and make it look easy. This was definitely one of my favourite shoots so far.

Soon it was time to go home and I was already thinking about dance and whether or not it was too late for me to learn, so I went home and worked on my flexibility!

We ran out of time to take my customary end-of-shoot photo with the model. Fortunately, I caught up with Brittany a few days later at her husband Seb Goldswain’s performance in Botha’s Hill (Seb is an excellent local guitarist). Thanks to my assistant Rowan for the photos.