Photographing a model in front of a black background, such as two yards of black velvet material, is dramatic. It forces all of the attention on the subject, it eliminates a distracting and busy background, and black is a powerful color. It makes a bold, visual statement. This is a Balinese dancer that I set up for my groups in the Indonesia photo tour. We photograph various dancers in different locations, and I also bring the velvet to do portraits like this. The lighting is diffused daylight -- i.e. shade. Notice instead of having the model stand on the velvet so the entire environment is black, I used the stone step as a base. That makes the dancer seem grounded instead of floating or suspended with nothing supporting her. My settings were 1/60, f/4, 800 ISO, and I shot this with a 24-105mm zoom.
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