Following on from my previous article about my 'Black Britannia' photo project, I thought I'd give some context behind my thoughts and planning for this project by talking about some of the more interesting and challenging shoots that resulted from putting my idea together.

The minute a friend mentioned to me about a young black British ballet dancer, I knew I had to include him in my 'Black Britannia' project. He, Shevelle Dynott was perfect for what I was aiming to say with this body of work. 

Of course, there have been other black British dancers on our TV screens and on stage over the years, but how many actually dance with the English National ballet company?

Shevelle is one of the rising stars of the English National Ballet and was first spotted by the Royal Ballet's 'Chance to Dance' scheme at his primary school in Brixton, South London. Dynott has since performed at the Royal Albert Hall and with the ENB.

After weeks of trying to track him down, I then had to convince him to participate in my project. Next, I needed to find a suitable backdrop for his photograph. My thoughts were against a typical ballet arena backdrop, this would have been too much of an obvious choice. So I decided to take him back to his south London roots and to use the backdrop of the vast council estates which, at the time, seemed to encapsulate or dominate inner-city south London. But this was not without its problems. Getting permission was the trickiest part of the shoot. Still, once I had arranged for all the appropriate permissions and insurances, I then found my two-person crew. Next, I had to decide on the type of lighting I would need, and other equipment which included a small trampette. And lastly, whether I was to shoot on film or to use my new digital Nikon D1 camera. I went for my #Hasselblad H2 film camera, using both a standard and wide-angle lenses. I also had to arrange for the shoot to take place at night, because of my working commitments; I remember turning down a great overseas feature-photoshoot at the time, I had already booked this into my schedule, and Shevelle had his own very busy diary mapped out too, I couldn't possibly put this off. I have to say that my Picture Editor, Ian Down at Mirror Group newspapers was a great help. Ian really bought into my concept and idea, going out of his way to accommodate me in completing my project; something that I'm very grateful for during that time.  

Shooting at night was another difficult challenge, but one in which we had to overcome. Firstly, there was a problem with the young 'hoods' who objected to us being there. Dodging beer cans and large plastic drinks bottles which were thrown at us from the balconies above while we were setting up our lighting equipment, was not helpful. Next, we were then threatened by a large man who also objected to our presence, along with his Pitbull Terrier. He eventually turned out to be our saviour; after I explained to him what I was trying to do, he then became our unofficial security guy, helping us with the seemingly relentless marauding young boys determined to stop us filming. 

Because we were shooting at night, I needed to produce two images, one with Shevelle jumping and another without him in the frame - just a picture of the background in focus. So before he arrived, I picked the spot where I wanted the shoot to take place, and on a tripod took a series of slow exposures of the background. I varied the times of my exposures to capture the correct ambient light, basically shooting for taste, capturing the street lights and also the light coming from the estate, which added to the atmosphere. Once Shevelle had arrived and had changed into his dance gear, one of my assistants placed the small trampette carefully in the middle of the scene that I had already photographed. I then asked Shevelle to go through a series of different jumps and movements. He was terrific; I was at first initially shocked at just how high he managed to jump, with the aid of this seemingly tiny trampoline. In fact, I had to ask him not to jump too high as he was jumping out of my fixed point. 

My reasons for shooting the background and Shevelle separately was that I needed to photograph him at a high speed, capturing his jump movements without any movement or blur, but this would result in the background going entirely into darkness. Because of this, I knew that if I wanted to capture the environment around Shevelle, I would need to make a composite - putting two images together as one final image. I had already taken images of the background at around a 15th of a second or so at f11 or f8 to keep the background sharp and to capture the ambient light. Once Shevelle had arrived and was ready to go, I then photographed him at 500th of a sec at around f5.6 concentrating two large softboxes towards him. I would then, in Photoshop, putting the two images together to produce the final shot.

Shevelle was the perfect model, helping out with suggestions and ideas, he played his part superbly.

The entire shoot worked perfectly, luck also played its part too that night, but overall I was very happy with the finished images which the Prime Minister at the time, Gordon Brown singled out for praise during his launch of the exhibition. 

The preparation behind each photograph for this project was a lengthy and complicated process. For many of my participant's requests, I had to wait around two years before actually photographing my subject. In some cases, even longer, I also had around a dozen people who declined my request, which was a shame. But the overall project was a great success and one that I might consider updating if I have the time during the next few years. 

The exhibition launched at the London's City Hall, and I had the unexpected pleasure of the then Prime Minister, Gordon Brown opening and making a fantastic speech on the night. 

See the opening night here.   

My next post will be on my photo-shoot with the Ex-heavyweight champion boxer Frank Bruno. Look-out for it. 

John Ferguson Photography 

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