That's a wrap

The past two days we had Debbie Daanen Photography at Aerial Dance. For the first time we did a photo shoot on ALL our apparatus. And it was awesome.
We had three and a half hours of photos with our incredible instructors over the two days, taking pretty pictures and insane feats of strength for our advertising materials. We also had 18 students show-off for the camera. This is now our 5th (or so) photo shoot and I’ve learned the following:
1. Holding a pose for a picture is totally different than doing it in a sequence or routine. It is WAY more exhausting!!!! To get the picture perfect, you have to squeeze every muscle. My poor calves and butt are SCREAMING today and I barely did any of the posing!
2. Having someone there to guide you is critically important to getting a great photo. That’s where I come in for most of the students and my staff. For 98% of the photo shoot I’m sitting by the camera yelling little adjustments to get the best pictures. Then when I actually am on the apparatus and one of my girls is yelling stuff at me, I realize first how hard it is to take direction and second how badly I need it. I was doing a fireman, Beginner Pole, and Kim was all “point your back foot”. She was TOTALLY right and I can’t believe I didn’t do it without her telling me! So thanks to all the women who pointed out the tiny changes to get the best pictures.
3. More space is good! This time we did it in the Aerial Studio and I purchased a fabric backdrop. It turned out MUCH better than all the times we did it with paper. There was more space to move, less chance of knocking over the backdrop and a much bigger “white space” to play on.
4. Pick a great photographer. Debbie and Ashley are INCREDIBLE. We LOVE working with them. And as that we’ve done a TON of shoots with them, they just keep getting better. Right now both these ladies can totally tell you exactly what a Scissors, Tinkerbell, and Hooked Recline are and because they are familiar with pole and our crazy lingo can anticipate the moves and angles for the very best shots.
5. Know what you want to do ahead of time. This time, for the first time ever, I made everyone give me a list of moves they wanted, then I supplemented with moves I know they’d look good in. Man did we get a TON of pictures. I reckon this time we covered about double the number of poses as we did in previous shoots.
6. The women of Aerial Dance are amazing. I sit here awed this morning. I cannot wait to see the pictures. Seeing it live was beyond inspiring. I am so unbelievably proud of every single woman who captured her grace, beauty, and bad-ass-ness this week.