Another school year began.  Another group of bright and driven students entered their senior year.  It’s time for senior portrait!

I had the pleasure of photographing Aisha.  Aisha is a dancer and had trained at the Oregon Ballet Theater School for many years before she joined the Rock School of Dance in Philadelphia last year.  This past summer she had the fantastic opportunity to attend the summer intensive at the Royal Ballet School!   I’m so proud of her.  I’ve known her family for a long time and know how dedicated she has been to ballet all these years.  I can’t wait to see where her passion takes her next!

It’s no surprise that her senior portrait session is a blend of senior portraits and dance portraits.  😀

Ash Williams started dancing in 2011 at age 7, in Southern Oregon at Ashland Dance Works.   Ash became a more serious dancer after seeing a performance at Northwest Dance Project in 2017.  After dancing on zoom for almost 2 years through the pandemic, Ash graduated high school early to move to Portland and continue training at dance studios and dance schools in Portland: Open Space Dance, Bodyvox Dance Center, and Northwest Dance Project Studio.  Ash is now attending Columbia College Chicago for a degree in Dance and Musical Theatre.

In the past years I’ve worked with Ash for their dance audition photos and photos for college application.  I’ve always enjoyed their energy, talent, and getting to see them grow as a person and as an artist has been a very rewarding experience.  I want to wish them the best in Chicago! 💪⭐

Did you see the harvest moon last night?    It is the perfect time for me to share some dancing-with-the-moon images here. 

In my work of dance photography, I place great importance in creating context and layers to help establish the mood of a photograph and invite audience to view it as an unfolding scene/story rather than a single action.   Therefore, in my recent creative dance photoshoot with Xuan Cheng and Brian Simcoe  (the principal dancers from Oregon Ballet Theater), we explored the idea of dancing with the moon.   Here are two of the resulting images with different energies.