A Ballet Shoot in a Warehouse: Experimenting with Light and Movement
I don’t do photography. At least, not in any professional sense. Then the other day a friend asked if I could help her daughter Miia put together some shots for a ballet portfolio with the only requirement being that it exceeded what she could do on her iPhone, I thought I’d give it a bash.
We shot at the Biscuit Factory in Leith, a space that looks like it’s been lifted from an 80s music video. All cracked concrete floors, old industrial beams and textured brick walls, with shafts of natural light slicing through from high windows. It’s rough around the edges in all the right ways. You get atmosphere just by turning up. In fact, appropriately enough we did say it looked like Kevin Bacon was about to dance right through the frame.
Without needing studio lighting (though I did take the Amaran 300d but left it unusued), I utilised instincts I’ve built up from filming; the fundamentals of light, contrast and composition. We brought in a can of Atmosphere Aerosol to catch those rays of sunlight and add a bit of cinematic texture (and hopefully not set of the smoke alarms). From there, it was about keeping things simple and responsive.
Miia brought the magic. Watching her move through poses, stretch into pointe work or sit in quiet preparation with her kit scattered around her, there was this calm confidence that made the whole shoot feel effortless. She had a clarity and poise well beyond her years, and it made my job (or experiment) a lot easier.
The edits were done in Lightroom, mainly to lift contrast and tease out the mood already in the images. No heavy retouching. just enhancing what was already there. That combination of grit and grace really held up on its own.
It’s easy to get become siloed in niches. But this reminded me that the skills underpinning any visual craft are more transferable than we often think. Light behaves the same. Composition obeys the same rules. And when someone like Miia steps into the frame, it doesn’t take much more than observation and a little intention to find the shot.
