The Story Behind the Photo

November 2023: Holidays and Seasons

Becca Bowen

“Ballerina Snow Globe”

The inspiration for this photo came in June when I attended my 6 yr. old granddaughter’s first ballet recital. As cute as she was in her fancy costume, the lighting was really tough. At the same time, I was looking ahead at the Photo Club’s monthly challenges for the year and got excited about figuring out how to capture her newly learned ballet poses within a snow globe for the fantasy or holiday assignments. First, I found the pedestal at Value Village which I painted white and added wood designs painted silver. I captured the ballerina pictures over the summer but it wasn’t until months later, while on vacation in Chelan, that I found a cracked Christmas dome in a gift shop which the owner gave me for free. I bought some fake snow to sprinkle on the snow globe, glitter snowflakes and fairy lights to make the background glimmer, fir branches and pinecones to add color and texture, and set up the miniature backdrop on quilt batting to give a snowy effect.

Technical Aspects:

Camera: Canon 90D

Ballerina Shot

Lens Canon 50mm 1.4, 100 ISO, f/4, 1/25 sec.

Lighting: Phottix Speedlight in a softbox on a boom overhead. Supplemental LED Fill Light on the backdrop, and small fill lights on the pedestal.

Snow Globe Backdrop Shot

Lens 50 mm 1.4, 400 ISO, f/4, 1/250 sec.

Lighting: 2 Phottix Nuada Ring 40C LED light and supplemental LED fill light.

Editing: Basic editing for both photos was done in Photoshop Elements 2021 and I used my recently added Photoshop Creative Cloud subscription for a simple way to edit out the background to isolate the ballerina. The ballerina was sharpened slightly using Topaz AI sharpening. The combining was done by placing the isolated ballerina onto the backdrop and blending a little bit around the pedestal to blur the sharp edge at the base.

Some behind the scenes photos: