I had been dreading this to be honest, maybe because I have never been as happy as just doing my own work, printing up favourites and selling them within my gallery. I get to meet customers, browsers, other artists and photographers but always we just chat about landscape and art, environment, history and society we often ‘put the world to rights’ and occasionally people buy things, it’s all cool and it’s all good, generally relaxing and I know where I’m at after three decades of commercial work from extreme sports and aerial photography to underground industrial work, interiors and architecture; from magazine shoots to nude portfolios, even God forbid, weddings!
The difficulty with friends is that when they ask you a favour, you feel compelled to accept, even when you’d really, really rather not, for varieties of reasons :-) And so it was when client now friend, Tracy Huckfield approached me from her pole dance company, ‘Pagan’s Pole’. A few years back we did a studio shoot of her in my Menai Bridge studio, mobile pole, sexy outfits, crazy lighting and outrageous poses (and that was just me!).
You see, Tracy is a very talented pole dancer and instructor, and her classes have gone from strength to strength with increasing numbers of excited and daring young women, of all shapes, sizes and ages, knocking on her Anglesey door to train them in the art of tight pant selection, vertigo elimination and muscle building aerial acrobatics! Once the activity of seedy clubs, pole dancing really seems to have come of age (mostly!) and the blatant sexual and provocative poses have crossed that boundary into a field of grace, gymnastic agility, Olympic strength and mind/body twisting routines.
International Pole Dance Champion - Karen Chaundy
© Glyn Davies 2010
But I didn’t know this, yet! I had no idea what to expect when I was asked to be the official photographer at Wales' first major pole dancing competition, NWPC, judged by national and international pole stars such as Karen Chaundy and Sally-Ann Giles. As far as I was concerned it was still just ‘event photography’ with no pay up front and just a blind faith that some of the participants would purchase some prints to recoup your substantial skill and time investment. This was NOT the way I do business or wanted to do business, it was and basically still is fraught with difficulty and unpredictability and generally derisory print prices. I didn’t need the work, certainly didn’t need the hassle and knew the print prices quoted were in the realm of amateurs needing beer money, not highly skilled professional photographers with thirty years experience - I hated the idea but friends are friends and Tracy only wanted me for the job, so I said yes !
I had been having an unusually busy day in the gallery that February morning, so it was with even more reluctance that I closed shop bang on time and raced home to get changed and collect gear. Carol was coming with me to keep me company, and as an experienced and well qualified personal trainer, was mildly curious about this unusual fitness activity!
We arrived well in time and numerous exotic high heels could be seen adorning the feet of heavily coated young females hanging around in the cold outside the Colwyn Bay Theatre, I guessed we’d found the right place! Our Tracy was busy greeting everyone in the main foyer, looking glamorous in her party frock and black stilettos. It was a eclectic looking mix of people, from heavy doormen to dainty dancers, skimpily dressed muscle-women to old ladies looking after granddaughters :-)
The basic programme was beginners, intermediate and advanced, followed by the pro category and interspersed with performances by two of the judges, pole superstars Sally-Ann Giles and Karen Chaundy.
International Pole Dance Champion - Karen Chaundy
© Glyn Davies 2010
My studio session with Tracy that time was fascinating enough, watching her ease her way up the pole time after time to adopt strange but awesome physical poses, but I’d always wondered how on earth dancers put them all together ! Well tonight was education night for me. Even the beginners displayed good confidence, and you could see them attempting to bring grace to a series of unconnected moves.
Intermediate Dancer (seemed advanced to me !) - Heather Walker
© Glyn Davies 2010
By the time the intermediate class came along, I was already awe inspired by one or two of the dancers, in particular a ballet dancer and gymnast, Heather Walker who looked like should could have been just at home on an Olympic tumble-mat as here on a pole. She was simply awesome, at times looking like a caterpillar arching her way down the pole head first and at others, dancing mid air splits as if in the Bolshoi Ballet!
Intermediate Dancer - Heather Walker
© Glyn Davies 2010
The way these women pieced together such strong poses was mostly seamless to me as a layman, but when the professionals came on, it was totally captivating. One particular very powerful girl, though not the ultimate winner, gave a freestyle performance which just rocked from pose to abdominal ripping pose, in an awesome display of strength.
Although there were some beautiful girls dancing, there was absolutely nothing sexy about the dancing, contrary to popular misconception, and although some of the girls were dressed in pants and micro bras, it was impossible for me at least, to see anything more than graceful and powerful athletes. As an ex-extreme rock climber, I know I’d have killed to use some moves like that on the rock face!
mini techy bity!: Tracy had sorted me prime seating right in the front row with clear views, perfect for photography. I’d borrowed a Canon 70-200 f2.8 L, (as I’d sold mine to replace it with an f4 version which is much lighter and better for landscape photography), as I guessed light levels would be low. I was right, but as importantly the long lens was useless anyway as the stage was so close I was almost using wide angles! I actually ended up using the 24-105L for almost everything, which as it happens was most fortuitous, as holding a the 200 2.8 for extended periods is just not fun! As the curtain opened on the first act, I knew the odds were stacked. The lighting was that of moonlight, mostly blue, very shadowy with a black background and the dancers dressed in – black! I rapidly adjusted the sensitivity setting right up to the maximum but could still only make 1/6 sec at f4 ! There was not a cat in hell’s chance of getting any shots of this act with that shutter speed and the dance instructor spinning around in an elevated hoop!
Fortunately, from then on the light levels improved and although still shooting at maximum aperture on the lens, I was able to get by with 1/100 sec shutter speeds, just enough to freeze most of the movement of the dancers. I was careful in choosing the right moment when dancers reached a pose extension and movement was at its slowest, but when they started spinning around the poles at high speed there was simply no chance of getting successful natural light shots, so I enjoyed using the movement to create some interesting movement blurs instead. I shot over 20gb of images over the event and had to download loads at the interval. We got there at 3.30 and left there at about 9.00pm so six hours including travel. I stayed up until 4.00 am editing the set, adjusting the files for contrast and colour temperature and selectively lightening and darkening extreme areas, stupidly perhaps on 600 images, but I’m a perfectionist so I had no choice! The next day I went on to turn all 600 images into B&W as well, once again individually adjusting many of them to suitable contrast and luminosity. In total, I spent about 16 hours working on this job, or two days full time work for most traders. If I was costing this out for any other job we'd have been talking well over £2K for this work so far!
Everything was uploaded to my website, copyright watermarks embedded heavily, as I can see these sorts of images going walkabout very easily on the world wide web! Within 12 hours I had made my first good sales to two dancers, one professional one amateur and since then I have received two further sets of reprint orders and requests from the pole dancing websites and the official Pole to Pole Magazine who had journalists at the event.
Professional Dancer, phenomenal performer and overall
winner of the professional category - Sonia Allcock
© Glyn Davies 2010
Overall, as a complete layman, I enjoyed the event far more than I thought I would and it was fascinating seeing how the more experienced dancers combined series of very hard moves into a beautiful and fluid performance. The only bad taste is that one person suggested I allow my professional images to be used on commercial websites for just £1. It's we need mutual respect, in that I am at the equivalent level of their top pros, after 3o years in MY profession, and need to be paid accordingly!
Multiple UK Dance Champion - Sally-Ann Giles
© Glyn Davies 2010
Thanks must go to Tracy for asking me to be the official photographer, and to all the amazing dancers who made my job so enjoyable, nice one!
All words and images are strictly copyright © Glyn Davies 2009
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