‘I hope it makes everyone want to jump!’: Michelle Z Simmons’ best phone picture | Photography

Michelle Z Simmons met up with ballet dancer Lucas Labrador in downtown Roswell, a suburb of Atlanta. Simmons had been a photographer for only some years, however had developed a love of taking pictures dancers. “I had photographed my niece, who’s now with Virginia’s Richmond Ballet, and needed to get extra expertise,” she explains. “Dancers have been photographed many, many instances, so I needed one thing completely different from the basic ballet shot.”

With that in thoughts, she requested Labrador to put on informal garments as an alternative of conventional ballet apparel and organized to satisfy in an space full of eating places and retailers. “Sadly, because the solar went down and the lights have been approaching, the visitors and crowds elevated, making the placement really feel messy,” Simmons says. “We walked round to a again alley and it was good. I grabbed some sun shades and a hat out of my automobile, and we simply performed concepts off one another till we bought some pictures we liked.”

Labrador had ultimate approval of the picture: “Ballet dancers are finicky about their pictures,” Simmons says. “What I feel seems to be good is just not all the time correct type for them.

“The shadow and the opposing diagonals created by Lucas’s physique and the staircase in relation to his prolonged arm and thigh are the opposite necessary elements of the picture. It creates a composition that retains your eye transferring across the picture,” she provides.

She hopes the picture will encourage others to “decide up their cellphone and head out to someplace sudden with somebody sudden. I additionally hope it makes everybody wish to soar!”