Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Long Exposure Dance Shoot

I had an opportunity to work with two young dancers from the National Ballet School of Canada. We decided to play with some long exposure photography. I had a lot of fun with these talented dancers.

Strobe effect wings

Jump motion

3 exposure stack

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion in an artistic way.

Let me capture the photos that move you.

Blurry photos are your worst enemy. It never fails to happen, everything is going great, and you are loving what you are getting. Then You Load the Images on Your Computer and Are So Disappointed: check out this blog post by Pixpa on motion blur featuring tips on managing shutter speed and camera shake to get the best blurry photos.

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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance with Sam Sendas

Sam and I finally got together to do a dance shoot together. We decided to play with lighting and fog for our session. Sam is performing at the London Fringe Festival later this month, go buy tickets.

Thanks to Kara Friedrich for the great makeup.

Preparing for flight

coming to life

coming to life

A happy accident in camera

Grand jete in the fog

Coming out of the fog

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion in an artistic way.

Let me capture the photos that move you.


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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance Photoshoot with Erika

Erika is a dancer in Toronto, we met on Instagram and decided to setup a shoot. The session was divided between the long exposure work and some dance / creative makeup. Abie supplied the makeup for both looks and it turned out great.

Creative makeup for the second look.

Erika jumping

Long exposure with 2 flashes

Multi dancer

Erika in a power pose

Resting in first position

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion in an artistic way.

Let me capture the photos that move you.

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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance Photoshoot with Nicolette and Claire

Dancers Nicolette and Claire came to the studio to help me test out some new lighting. I was playing around with the strobe setting on my speedlights to capture multiple images on the same exposure. The ladies were talented dancers and provided some great poses for testing. I was pretty pleased with the test, but I definitely have some work to do. Afterwards we shot a few poses with more conventional lighting. Thanks to my Fanshawe work placement student, Clayton Durrell, for assisting during the shoot and for acting as a manual rear curtain flash on the one image.

2 dancers, 8 flashes

Strobe with rear-curtain flash

A simple skirt drop makes this lovely image.

Simple stretch en pointe.

I like how quiet this image is.

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion in an artistic way.

Let me capture the photos that move you.


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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance with Hannah and Ashlyn

Hannah and Ashlyn came to the studio to play with some lighting so I could show one of my Fanshawe students a long exposure setup. The afternoon went really as both dancers were enthusiastic even though they had come from a 5 hour practice. We got some good images en pointe and had a lot of fun.

Long exposure twirl with fabrics

Starting with a flash

Setup of the above images. - Photo credit Jes Hernandez.

En point with fabrics

Double exposure dancer

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion in an artistic way.

Let me capture the photos that move you.

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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance Photography with Maddie

Maddie came to the studio for some dance images.She represented Canada in a dance competition in Spain this summer and came away with 2 silvers and 1 gold medal. Maddie trains out of the O'Neill Academy of Dance and is fearless as a dancer and we got some great images.

I wanted to show off Maddie's strength and flexibility with some different lighting techniques. I was very happy with the results. Melissa O Makeup did Maddie's makeup and it was really bold and dramatic and beautiful.

Beautiful form and muscle definition

Showing off her flexiility

Dancing with fabric

Close-up of the makeup.

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion.
 

Let me capture the photos that move you.

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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Dance Photography with Montana

I hadn't really tested the studio out for dance photography yet other than a few pictures. I asked Montana to come in for some dance photos. I had worked with her before a couple of times and she represented Canada in a dance competition in Spain this summer. Montana as always was super talented, friendly and accepted every motion challenge I put before her.

We played with a few different techniques, long exposure, fabric and mist. They turned out really well and I got a sense of how my studio would work for shooting dance photography. It worked out well. I mean I'd love to have a larger studio, but who wouldn't.

Behind the scenes - shooting from a tripod.

Long exposure technique with a dancer Montana

Jumping with fabric

Jumping in the red fog

- London Dance Photo - I am Mark Ruddick, an experienced photographer working in London, ON. I enjoy photographing dancers and really appreciate the athleticism and artistry involved. Coming from a fight photography background, I have developed my technique to capture rapidly moving subjects at high speed in front of the lens. The resulting instinct for timing fight photography has lead to an ability to capture my subjects at the peak of their motion.

Let me capture the photos that move you.

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Mark Ruddick Mark Ruddick

Lighting fun with Karate Black Belt Alysha

Alysha came back into the studio after our chance meeting a couple of weeks ago to play with some great kicks. We decided to try some long exposure, multiple exposure and fog lighting. Alysha is incredibly skilled and has perfect control of her motion so she was an ideal candidate for this lighting.

A shout out to my lighting mentor Sean Allot who showed me so much about lighting that I'm able to experiment like this properly.

Thanks to Stephen Yule for being a most excellent assistant last night.

Here are a few images and a behind the scenes video from last night.

The final image from the video

More long exposure

Jumping side kick in the fog

Karate Stance

- Mark Ruddick Photography is a full service London, Ontario photographer who specializes in fitness, bodybuilding and fight photography

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