Etude de Danse :
Phase One – Paint
Dance, light, and the property of liquids
Inspiration
Cecilia Potter Whyel and I started on a journey of the study of dance, art and photography, and how they interact with each other. Our only motto is: we experiment, we fail, we discover something and we start again.
The idea came from our discussion on what dance looks like to Cecilia. We kept looping back on the idea that both time and dance are circular and that photography can record all of that.
Before Paint
We agreed that for us to create art, we needed motion, time and a third element that would tie everything together .
We were inspired by artists such as Shinichi Maruyama and his unique use of water and ink, Edgar Degas for his obsession with dancers, Pierre Auguste Renoir for the beautiful rich tones of his painting and Pablo Picasso for his constant need to experiment.
Cecilia and I would never claim to compare ourselves with any of those artists, however it is important when creating, to elevate ourselves and look at the best artists to help us with what we are trying to accomplish.
Why Paint Sucks
After multiple excited conversations, Cecilia and I decided to start with paint as our third element. The idea was to have paint gracefully flow around her while she was doing something cool, and all I needed to do was capture it. Ha!
She bought kid friendly paint in case she inadvertently swallowed it or threw it in my eyeballs (we are both knuckleheads).
We mixed the paint with baby oil and water, but the oil was making it heavy so we decided that using only water was better.
We blended it in a way that left the paint a little thick and assumed that it would fly off and make beautiful shapes while she would dance gracefully and I would capture everything.
The Shoot
Cecilia danced gracefully and I captured everything but paint.
The paint flew alright, on the backdrop, on the floor, in her hair. The paint splashed, it made drops, and at some point, Cecilia looked like she had alien hands (see below? what the heck happened?!?!)
Alien Hands
Nothing really worked, but we giggled quite a bit at how ridiculous the whole paint situation was.
We also decided to play with motion, so I slowed down my shutter, hoping to get some of that paint and some cool blur. I did get motion but still….not much paint.
We still got some pretty pictures though 🙂
Oh here is some paint!!! yay!
Cecilia spun to the left, to the right, she threw paint in the air, on the ground, but nothing.
I changed my lights, made them less soft, I backlit, I top lit, I bottom lit (just kidding, I didn’t), but still nothing.
So now we know what doesn’t work: the paint! The paint sucks. It all the paint’s fault. The paint wouldn’t pose for us!
The laws of physics also suck. Liquid flies (fast!!) in the direction in which you throw it (sounds obvious now that I write it, but we were quite amazed by that). In order to record it with a camera, we would need some sort of a waterfall of paint. So physics, you suck too.
Conclusion
So now we know that this shoot won’t work the way we did it, and this is a big step because now we know! How exhilarating!! You might roll your eyes and say, “I could have told you so”, but you didn’t! No one did! And that’s ok because Cecilia got to put her own painterly handprints on her legs for some weird Cecilia reason.
Paint hand print on leg? Check
What’s next
So you may think….well this ain’t going so well now is it?
Maybe.
But.
We thought about volume of paint and stream of paint. Or maybe water (to begin with).
Cecilia told me she placed an Amazon order. For Super Soakers.
You heard it right! Super Soakers!!!! Haaaaaa!!!! Epic, right!!!
I’m going to buy plastic covers at Home Depot so we don’t destroy the studio.
This is for our next experiment in a couple of week.
Stay tuned. (giddy wiggle)
