High in the Air

I was completely lucky when I ran into these
three young break dancers. I was heading home
and I saw the crowd standing around. The three of them were very entertaining and I knew I had to take some action pictures. I put my setting on continuous so I could get shots like these. They were all really talented and you could tell they all really liked break dancing and preforming in front of a crowd.

In the picture to the left I tried to emulate Dennis Stock's photograph of Earl Hines and his band. In his photograph he uses what we have called in class the fan technique which spans the entire picture. I really like how this dancer's body curves around the edges of the photo. There is a lot of space in the picture but it is not empty space and allows the picture to breath.

The picture to the right is my favorite out of the three because it has so many different elements. The entertainer captures the attention of the people passing by on the street. Not only the people standing close to the camera but also the men in the background near the taxis. There are a lot of vertical elements: the buildings, the people, the lamp posts and the scaffold. There is also a good vanishing point highlighted by the darker strip cutting through the middle of the picture, the lines of the sidewalk, the buildings and lastly and my favorite the dancer's arm. He is pointing to the upper right corning and makes you read the picture from the left to the right.