Lore Zonderman // Amsterdam, Netherlands

Lore was my third photo shoot out of four sessions in one day, and at this point I wanted to photograph in a completely different location than my other sessions. I told Lore I wanted to capture both her strength as a ballerina and the historic buildings of Amsterdam in one shot, and she responded in the perfect fashion.

With grace and poise, she hit her stride at the perfect moment. The uniqueness of this Hasselblad Ballet project is that it is limited to only 12 frames, and there are no do-overs: these are one-take poses. There would be no way to know until weeks later if we had been successful in capturing the shot.

Technical, nerdy secret: the Hasselblad 500CM camera has a unique feature that allows you to remove the film back off the body of the camera and dry-fire both the lens and the body. Additionally, you can raise the mirror, leaving only the slightest actuation of the shutter to capture the photo. When photographing a moving pose like a ballerina, I find this technique particularly useful for practicing the timing of the pose with the camera shutter. This approach provides me with multiple instances to ensure I'm on the same page as the ballerina, without using up any precious film. However, when this technique is used with the film back in place, it does limit your ability to recompose or refocus, and it truly ups the ante for the resulting image.

During our conversation, I couldn't help but share that one of the main reasons why I reached out to her was because of her cool name. I told her that Lore Zonderman couldn't have been given a cooler name even if a committee was tasked to come up with a name for an actress. But I digress. Lore is as cool as a cucumber, with the name of a world-famous Hollywood star, and as elegant and strong as any ballerina.

May 10, 2022