The dance studio photoshoot this weekend took place in a large room with a black curtain on the back. Armando and I set up four strobes surrounding the subjects (a group of children), and another strobe fitted with a large softbox directly in front and overhead of the subjects, as the key light. Even though the background curtain was black, it did have folds, wrinkles, etc., so it was important to make sure that no light fell on it in order for the background to come out completely black. I set my Canon EOS-1D X
The other strobes were turned towards the background, so to avoid illuminating it, we took advantage of the large size of the room and positioned the subjects sufficiently far from the background, so that the light from the strobes would fall off and would not reach the curtain. To have more control of the light direction, we put strip banks (a rectangular grids on soft vanes) on the front to the softboxes. This way, all the lights coming from the front were soft, but still relatively focussed.
One surprising feature of the dance floor, which is basically a matt black material with a texture somewhere between plastic and rubber, is that it is not so matt, but rather quite reflective under the strobe lights. We did not want the light themselves reflecting in the floor, so we tilted the softboxes slightly upward. The reflections of the subjects, on the other hand, looked very nice, and I tried to make them part of the composition whenever possible.
The floor was also scuffed everywhere by the dancers’ shoes, and every scuff mark was prominently visible in the photos. In the past, I used to spend substantial amounts of time removing the most prominent scratches from the floor in Photoshop, but after reviewing many photos, I now think that the beaten-up floor adds authenticity to the shots. It conveys that the photos were taken not in an artificial environment of the photo studio, but in the actual dance school, where children spend a lot of time practicing their art.