Photographing dancers has become my thing over the years. It all started when I was working as a musician in a dance production in Switzerland, I asked one of the dancers if I could try taking some dance photos and since that day this has been the only thing I want to do.
I only photograph in black and white and work with simple lighting, usually with one or two flashes and I still use my old D-Lite 4 it and Quadra Hybrid from Elinchrom.
When I was told that Elinchrom's new transmitter Transmitter Pro is actually compatible with my old flashes, I immediately booked a shoot with a dancer to test.
Until now, I had only been able to work with flash sync times down to 1/250 second and now all of a sudden I could photograph my dancers in shutter speeds down to 1/8000 second with my old flashes! All that was needed was a new transmitter, the Elinchrom Transmitter Pro.
The fact that I also get the opportunity to photograph portraits with a flash with a large aperture to get a short depth of field doesn't make matters worse, a sense of the time "before and after" Hi-sync came along!
The images in this article were photographed at Atelje Uggla in Stockholm where I brought my own flashes. Dancer is Madeline Woo from California who now works in Sweden as a dancer with the Royal Ballet at the Opera.
I shot all the images with a shutter speed of 1/4000 second which could really freeze any movement. As a light source I only used a flash, D-Lite 4it, with softbox Rotalux 70cm Deep Octa which I placed in different positions to vary the lighting.
Fredrik is a self-taught photographer and his special interest in dance images has come naturally as he, as a musician, has often worked together with dancers in various projects. Most often, Fredrik photographs in black and white, which gives his dance pictures a fantastic sculptural feel.
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