Capturing Epic Portraits Of Stunning Aztec Dancers

Hey Steemers,

I took this photo recently with some clients. It was as part of one of the Aztec Workshops we had before leaving Mexico for the summer.

I've been fascinated by Mesoamerican culture since my first trip to Mexico more than 15 years ago. Having the opportunity to create these photos is a blessing. Feel free to check out www.jpstonesphotography.com to see some more photos from these workshops.

This was a tricky photo to light as I wanted it to look both flattering and dramatic. The idea was based around ‘sun worshiping’ to the deity Huitzilopochtli. This practice is part of the Aztec religion and I wanted to try and show it’s cultural importance.

Step 1

Logically the context of this would place the sun in front and above the subject. But as that would provide flat light on the face we decided to place the key light camera-right instead. We used a large octagon here so that the light was really soft and the catch lights in the eyes very wide.

Step 2

We then placed a reflector camera-left to keep the shadows to a minimum. This simple setup gave us a good quality of light on the subject’ face.

Step 3

We also wanted to backlight the feathers – to make them really pop out. This is counterintuitive because we wanted to try and make this look un-staged. To try and get round this we kept the back-light (a bare speed-light) low, so it would not cast too much of an outline around the subject.

That’s it! I then opened up the aperture on my 50mm lens to separate the subject from the background vegetation and we snapped away until we got a good symmetrical pose.