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From a ‘Bayou Ballet’ to Center Stage
How a trip to Texas’ cypress swamps informed Art David’s eventual pictorial of a Florida dance fest with his trio of Tamron lenses.
Author: Jenn Gidman
Images: Art David
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How a trip to Texas’ cypress swamps informed Art David’s eventual pictorial of a Florida dance fest with his trio of Tamron lenses.
Dedicated amateur photographer Art David—whose award-winning images have appeared in such publications as Naples Illustrated and Gulfshore Life, as well as in exhibits at the Naples Art Center, the Marco Island Center for the Arts, and the gallery at the Rookery Bay Center in Naples, Florida—has long prided himself on his landscapes and street photography. After his videographer son gifted him a Sony camera about five years ago, Art soon swapped that out for a full-frame Sony mirrorless camera.
“I purchased two full-frame Tamron lenses at that point, due to their reasonable pricing and positive online reviews: the 28-75mm F/2.8 Di III VXD G2 standard zoom and the 150-500mm Di III VXD ultra-telephoto zoom,” Art says. “Then, after I attended a photo workshop in Caddo Lake, located on the Texas-Louisiana border, I rented a Tamron 70-180mm F/2.8 Di III VC VXD G2 telephoto zoom to better take visually pleasing pictures of the lake’s cypress trees.”
Art was so impressed with how the 70-180mm F2.8 VC lens performed as he captured the vibrantly colored cypresses that he ended up buying the lens instead of returning it to the rental company. “Interestingly, I titled many of those images as if they were photos of ballerinas,” he says. “In fact, I’m currently planning a book of images taken at the lake called Caddo Lake Ballet. The tree image you see here was given the title ‘Bayou Ballet’ long before I took the other photos of the dancers. In many of those early images, I see dancers whose arms were stretching out over the water as they pirouetted over the lake. I guess I was predisposed to taking photos of real dancers.”
Soon after his trip to the cypress swamps, Art discovered that the United Arts Council of Collier County was sponsoring its first-ever Naples International Dance Festival, so he contacted the group and volunteered to photograph the event. “I viewed it as an opportunity to step outside my comfort zone and try something novel,” he notes. “Not only did I capture photos of dancers as they performed onstage, but I also took pictures of a very talented young woman whom I photographed on the beach one evening as the sun was setting.”
For that photo, Art set up an off-camera studio flash as a fill light while using the Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 G2 to capture the dancer as she performed on the beach. “Obviously, the quickly changing lighting conditions were definitely challenging, as well as getting just the right composition and framing of her movements,” he recalls.
Then, following the dance festival, Art took a landscape photography trip to South Dakota’s Badlands National Park. “It was during the time of the terrible wildfires that were spreading throughout Canada,” he says. “A photo I took there of the setting sun appearing as an orange fireball was caused by the dense particles of smoke that engulfed the entire area. That image was captured with the Tamron 150-500mm ultra-telephoto lens, a photo I took with the intention of capturing the tops of the cliffs as silhouettes with which to frame the setting sun.”
That image subsequently came in handy this past spring, after Art photographed the second dance fest in Naples. “I decided to make a composite of that photo, along with one of a delicate ballerina I captured with the Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 VC G2, appearing as if she were encapsulated in a snow globe, only this time within a fireball,” he says.
The other three images of dancers you see here, taken at the festival, were also taken with the 70-180mm F2.8 VC G2. “This lens has proven to be extremely versatile at medium distances of 20 to 50 feet from my subjects,” Art says. “I shot in burst mode at a relatively high shutter speed of 1/640 sec. at F3.2. With the high ISOs I used, there was some noise in the images, but I was able to minimize that in post-processing.”
Thanks to the Tamron 70-180mm F2.8 VC G2, which offers Tamron’s proprietary Vibration Compensation (VC) stability technology and fast-aperture low-light capabilities, Art was able to seamlessly capture all of the dance performances. “The stage lighting provided enough light to capture the dancers as they moved across the stage,” he says. “And the dancers were absolutely brilliant. Their movements, form, and compositions were stunning. Using the 70-180mm lens, it was very easy for me to frame them with enough space to capture those magnificent forms. In post, I merely cropped and lightly corrected for color and tone.”
To see more of Art David’s work, check here.
