Poler

A year ago a co-worker mentioned that his wife started doing Polga and immediately my mind thought of shooting one of her classmates at a Gentleman's Club, or at least mimic the environment of a strip club.  Then recently a fellow photographer shared some images of a model he planned to shoot and I noticed she was friends with my co-worker's wife on Facebook and had some Polga pics on her profile page.  I messaged Eddy and asked if she would be interested in shooting with me.  We talked about wardrobe and routines and decided it made sense to do a test shoot first.

My co-worker's wife is now an instructor at the Pole Fitness facility and after speaking with the owner, we received permission to shoot there.  The space is rectangular and deeper as opposed to wider, which limits the amount of space when shooting horizontally.

I brought my travel kit: Manfrotto Nano Stands, 3 speedlights ( 1- SB900 and 2 - SB600s), HONL Gels and Grids. Basically I shot at 1/200 to kill the ambient and used the SB-600s as rim lights and the SB900 gridded to resemble a spotlight. Based on our test shoot, I need a couple more speed lights and a fog machine to help add dimension to the lights.

On the day of the shoot, I ended up using 5 speed lights with Lavender and Rose colored gels and switched to my brolly since the grid was a bit too narrow, even with it backed up.  I also brought my Alien Bee 1600 to help create some ambient light for some Motion images.  Eddy brought three outfits and assorted high heels.  Also, she did her own hair and make-up, which again is one of the requests I have of models I shoot.

We shot for about three hours and my co-worker's wife was a GREAT help with the fog machine and keeping her eyes focused on detail elements, i.e. clothing, hair and other things I'm not looking at while composing and lighting.  Most of the images are shot with the rim lights one stop above my key light.

By the time we approached the last hour, we were all getting tired and some of the things I tried to capture motion wasn't working.

What Did I Learn?

• Look for a space that's a bit larger - I needed to get more separation between the pole and the backdrop, but with the narrowness of the space it was hard excluding some of the existing background elements from creeping in
• Set my speedlights farther apart - I kept the speedlights about a foot apart from each other to give the illusion of more lights based on the field of view.
• Buy a couple more speed straps - Since I borrowed Brian's speed lights I ended up using rubber bands to affix the gels to the speedlights, but there was some light leaks.

A big thanks to Diana for letting us use her studio, Michelle for helping out in a multitude of ways and Eddy for seeing my vision and working with me regardless of all the crap people have given her about the images.  More images can be found FLICKR site or my Facebook Fan Page