Sierra Ortega // San Antonio, TX

Along with my other sky image, this shoot was inspired by another image I was shown, this one by Albert Watson. The image was a man that looked like he was “falling from the sky” - and I thought it would be great to do a ballerina take on it. 

Step one was the hardest, which was procuring a trampoline that had an open view to the sky, which would allow me to get at a low angle and photograph the ballerina as she bounces up and down on the trampoline. Within minutes of posting my request on social media, my friend Scott, a wonderful photographer in his own right, offered up his trampoline. The only problem was that his backyard was littered with beautiful oak trees, and had no open view of the sky. 

After a few weeks of not being able to find another trampoline, I told Scott that I would just purchase a sky background, and then have the ballerina jump against that. The background arrived (thanks, free 2 day shipping!), and I reached out to Sierra to see if she’d be up for a last minute shoot - I wanted to be respectful of Scott’s time and work around his schedule. 

Since the background was a rectangle, and the Hasselblad image a square, I knew that I was going to have to have to compose in a manner that cut out a lot of the ballerina: only parts of the ballerina would be in the frame, which further added to the mood that I was going for. 

All in all, a fun shoot, keeping with the theme of the project of ballerinas with my Hasselblad - but just photographed in a different manner than usually seen. 

March 26, 2021