Staged Beauty

One of the highlights of the Lumen Dei tour was the chance to shoot some Ladakhi dancers in traditional costume. I paired up with another photographer in the group who was seriously into off camera flash and we explored a few different kinds of fashion-influenced setups.

As fun as those technical games were, I was soon reminded that the best images don’t just come from good gear setups, but rather they result from the relationship you build, as a photographer, with your subject. Hence the best images from the session came after I had relaxed a little and started talking to the models a little more clearly. There’s still plenty of geeky off-camera flash stuff going on in most of these images, but there’s also something more human happening as well, which I think is what makes each of these shots work.