Dana Weltman - Final Project - Closing Thought

Dana Weltman

Motion Photography

Final Project

December 10, 2019

For my final project, I planned to photograph the movement and emotion of dance. I decided to photograph dance because as simple as photographing dance may seem, we find act out dance in many different, unique, and subtle ways. We dance to perform, for emotion, when we are bored, having fun, and even by accident. When dancing there is not only movement within the body, but also within peoples’ faces, clothing, hair, etc. I decided to reach out to many dance teams here at Penn State including whiplash and Urban Dance Troupes. I sat in on their practices and photographed the movement of their bodies, faces, hair, etc. I also photographed many singular dancers including friends and family that I knew practiced a bit of dance. I definitely began to struggle right after the second or third time photographing. I felt more comfortable photographing the single dancers in comparison to the big dance groups. I felt as if I was in the way of the large dance groups and it definitely showed in my first few images. By the time I photographed Urban Dance Troupes, I decided to open up and you can tell by the images from that practice that I was improving with angles, the way I followed the motion with my camera, and even the distance I was to the dancers. My other struggle was allowing my mind to open up to new ways of looking at motion and dance. I went into this project with a certain mindset and after plenty of crit and positive suggestions from Eric and all of you, I finally came around to look at my project in a different and more abstract light. My images show emotion as well as motion of all different forms of dance with the monochrome theme as well as the fast motion shots. My goal is for people to look at the images, examine them, and even wonder what they may be looking at sometimes. Each image is unique to itself yet ties the entire group together. This project was quite a journey and I hope you all enjoy the final result as much as I do.