Category: Cary Ballet

Robert Burns Was Right!

“The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men often go awry”

The wonderful Dancer and Actor who has performed as “Herr Drosselmeyer” in the Cary Ballet Company productions of the “The Nutcracker”, recently asked me for some photographs to show some folks who had never seen it. Retired as I am, I set off into archive land, thinking I could give him a well deserved chronology and evidence of his artistry, from my work of 2011 to 2021.

Was going well until I discovered I’d never edited the rough gallery from the 6 PM Sunday performance in 2018. And it was a bit of photographic special. I do remember thinking, last show, I have everything, so let’s take some chances! Added a 1.5x Tele Convertor Lens to my tripod mounted Sigma 100-300 F4 Zoom. So now, I was at 150 mm to 450 mm focal length – capable of making head shots from rear of theater. But high risk, including the loss of an aperture stop and narrower Depth of Field, so lots of soft and out of focus images. Still had my 50-135 mm on the other body. And I’ve spent the last two afternoons winnowing down my mistakes. I forgot how much work this was. Stay tuned!

Sublime

Ansel Adams said “The Negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score, and the Print the performance.” The Digital Darkroom allows me the same tools as a Painter and the work process is pretty much the same, sans the odor of paint. Having real time to look through the 12 year catalog of my “scores”, aka “Digital Negatives”, I’m finally figuring out how to perform them.

Cary Ballet Rehearsal at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium – June 2017

The Gift of Teachers

Gave some fellow grey hairs a presentation today at The Cary Senior Center. Went well but I was as nervous as blind cat in a dog pound!

Home, my informally adopted Granddaughter & Dumpster Puppy Rescuer & Elementary School Music Teacher & Soprano & Confidant stopped by ( okay dragged by now grown dog for treats) on a rare Feb. 70’s, screens open afternoon before the Dog Park. Told her how it went, 4 years after my last class, cleaning out the cobwebs. She smiled and said ‘Teaching is hard!”.

And I said it is and it’s also wonderful! And she smiled, again.

Deanna Seay and student – Cary Ballet Conservatory – 2011

A Christmas Tradition

Watching the Cary Ballet Company “Nutcracker” last night was wonderful.

I didn’t know it then, but this photograph from 2021 would be the last I would make, after a dozen years of CBC productions. It was inevitable. As Chaucer wrote in 1395: “Time and tide wait for no man.” Decided the next fall, without regret, it was time to retire.

Cary Ballet “Nutcracker” Final Bow | Cary Arts Center | 19 Dec 2021

The extraordinary performance I saw last evening was deeply life affirming. Being part of that, lasts forever. About as long as it will take me to really curate about 5 TB of Digital Negatives! The luxury of time & absence of needing to earn is a new kind of freedom that I fully embrace. Like the hugs I got last night.

Abigail Adams On The Paris Opera

Watching the Ken Burns film tonight about the American Revolution, put me back in a Paris Vacation Apartment, in Marais, after an evening at the Opera for the 50th Anniversary of Balanchine’s Ballet “Jewels”. I was coincidentally reading David McCulloughs biography of “John Adams”. This is an excerpt from Abigail Adams letter of 20 Feb. 1785:

My Dear Sister,

The first dance which I saw upon the Stage shoked me, the Dress’es and Beauty of the performers was enchanting, but no sooner did the Dance commence, than I felt my delicacy wounded, and I was ashamed to bee seen to look at them. Girls cloathd in the thinest Silk: and Gauze, with their peticoats short Springing two foot from the floor poising themselves in the air, with their feet flying, and as perfectly shewing their Garters and draws, as tho no peticoat had been worn, was a sight altogether new to me. Their motions are as light as air and as quick as lightning. They balance themselves to astonishment. No description can equal the reality.

Cary Ballet Company Rehearsal – Raleigh, June 2017 https://www.miamicityballet.org/discover/meet-our-dancers/maddie-goodman/

They are daily trained to it from early infancy, at a Royal academy instituted for this purpose. You will very often see little creatures not more than 7 or 8 years old as undauntedly performing their parts as the eldest amongst them. Shall I speak a Truth and say that repeatedly seeing these Dances has worn of that disgust which I first felt, and that I see them now with pleasure. …. The art of dancing is carried to the highest degree of perfection that it is capable of; at the opera

I have Scarcly room left to say that I am Your affectionate sister

A.A

The Comfort of Late Life – Part Trois

Made a menu today for the rest of this & next week. Then, shopped at Total Wine, BJ’s Warehouse and Lowe’s Foods. My list would be, Doctor Approved!

And there is, I’ve discovered, a freedom, a release from “Worry” with a comfortable, late life. It is simple and elegant. Like an open stage, in theater.

3D Jazz Project at Cary Ballet Conservatory – Rehearsal

Cary Arts Center, February 2016

Sunday Night Muse

Tuesday, I’ll deliver photographs (not these) for display at the 2025 Cary Photographic Artists Members Show at The Cary Arts Center. The exhibit is coincident with the Cary Ballet Company Annual performance of “The Nutcracker”.

My last participation was 2019 (the second photograph) . Which her father made certain to take home. With luck, I might get to visit with both this young lady and her parents. All are still in my heart.

Cary Ballet Conservatory “Nutcracker” Studio Rehearsal- December 2015

Cary Ballet Conservatory – Youth America Grand Prix Preview – April 2019

Genuflection

The luxury of unhurried time without schedule is a great gift of late life. Especially when the Muse refuses to allow sleep and demands attention. It’s taken me a very long time to “see” this image. I hope to get the print right.

Cary Ballet Company Rehearsal for “Cinderella” – 31 March 2011

Intimate of The Muse

Recently, I got skunked in a local Juried Photography Competition. This evening, for a completely unrelated reason, was reading an interview with Joni Mitchell. The interviewer wrote “like Miles, Joni never really played to her fans, speaking directly only to her muse. ”

That is, I do believe, the deal. And how I played.

Call For The Company

When You Get To Be Human

By December of of 2012, I’d found my artistic & spiritual home at Cary Ballet Conservatory. Especially in Theater.

Made this image on 12/12/12 at the Cary Arts Center. Didn’t realize she was my “Muse”. Stage Makeup and Street Clothes. Later, home at my desk, after downloading and backing up the photographs I’d made at rehearsal, I stared at this, with my Bourbon & Beer and realized :

  1. I loved it without knowing why.
  2. I had no idea why it looked this way.
  3. I understood nothing about light. Theater was a comfort zone, the lighting was just there. I was completely ignorant of lighting design and the properties of light!

Spent the next summer learning. Found the work of George Hurrell, another Painter turned Photographer. And Yousuf Karsh, whose work changed after he became involved with an actress and discovered theater lighting. And found my Lighting Bible – for free (Pages 135 through 140)!

And I spent the next 10 years trying to get it right. Haunted eBay:

Mole – Richardson Tungsten Fresnels

And found young dancers who were willing to let me try to make their portraits.

Illegal Sunday

The month before making this promo image for “Collabo”, a joint performance by the Ballet & Jazz Companies at Cary Ballet Conservatory, I discovered, while visiting the NCMA (North Carolina Museum of Art) Booth at Cary’s “Lazy Daze”, it would not be allowed. There were new rules against “commercial” photography. Being well versed in corporate inanity, I acted surprised, nodded and smiled, saying I certainly understood.

Having previously photographed performances by the non-profit Cary Ballet Conservatory at NCMA and me working pro-bono and content I was breaking no rules, I devised a work around. First, I didn’t tell anyone. Second, it was planned for a Sunday and I knew the NCMA Rep at Lazy Daze wouldn’t be there. Third, I deployed Dance Moms on the perimeter and nobody messes with Dance Moms – plus they were also VALS (Voice Activated Light Stands) and held a bunch of “speed lights” triggered from my camera.

There is a 24″ x 36″ framed print of this image on my living room wall. I would be willing to lend it to NCMA for display – Gratis! Seriously!

North Carolina Museum of Art – 23 Sept 2018

To Dance and Dream

It’s hard to comprehend this was only four years ago. I was still a “Widower Novitiate”. Work provided balance. This studio session was with a stunning natural beauty and drop dead graceful, elegant dancer. Proof that the Great Spirit was in a really good mood when she was born. To work, to collaborate with such hard working artists was a great gift. I was very, very lucky.

Studio Session at Cary Ballet Conservatory – June 2021

Principals

Oct. of 2010 found me floundering, looking for a raison d’etre. Newly decoupled from an IT job at Lenovo nee IBM PC Company, south of Social Security and burnt from the inanity of self absorbed navel gazers who professed omnipotence, my tank was empty. Which properly worried my sweetheart about how we were going to get along.

So trying to find my bearings . I got a legit press pass from “Cary Citizen” and went to photograph “Celebration of The Children In the Arts”. Which was, unknown to me, a gateway spiritual drug. I found my artistic North Star!

100% naive of Ballet, Deanna Seay (who’d I had no idea had just retired as Principal Soloist at Miami City Ballet or had any idea of what that meant) was very kind and supportive and invited me to just come and watch classes.

And I remember thinking “This is hard – really hard – way harder than than Football or Basketball!” And I got to meet and photograph Principals who were very kind to my endeavors

Deanna Seay Master Class – February 2011

Maria Chapman Kennedy with Mimi Staker – August 2012

Elizabeth Gaither & Class – July 2014

Aha Moment

Fifteen minutes before my turned off, 225 F oven, renders portions of slow cooker pork stew (seasoned neck bones, homemade stock and all the vegetables that needed using) to go on brown rice & millet in homemade veg stock, I’ve some time to write.

Best I can remember, I cycled through 13 or 14 DSLR’s between 2007 and now. There are, 500 or 600 K clicks later, a lot of stories. But today, duh, I realized all my work had to do with intimacy. With us humans. Even my OBX photographs are about, being alone, with clarity.

This is from one of my last portrait sessions. A young woman I’d known as a young Dancer. And I got to visit with her and her Mom and give them the prints they ordered. It answered the question of why, I made photographs.

What Really Matters

Late today, in dangerous heat, I watched a U-Haul Truck unload into an empty apartment in my building. While I was tending the Clam Sauce for my Linguini. In comfortable air conditioning. A vivid reminder of life changes.

Stopped working in the Fall of 2022. And now, luxurious with time, seeing it again. School holidays were Golden Time for me. I could move a ton of lighting gear into studio for a week and schedule dancer sessions. The Artist & Dad genes in me kicked in. I was, chest beating proud of them all. Her folks know!

Studio Session, Cary Ballet Conservatory – 27 Dec 2019

The Importance of Teachers

Early this week, I made photographs of a Kindergarten Graduation Ceremony at a wonderful nearby school where a young neighbor and dear friend, teaches. I finished the edit this afternoon. Gave her a USB Drive to share with the School, Faculty and Parents. Without parental permission, I can’t show them here. And BTW, anyone who thinks teaching is easy, in spite of being a Fitness Buff, she was wiped out from long days at the end of school year.

But I did have permission when I made this photograph. And I could not stop thinking about the fact that this young woman, guiding the very young dancers here, was adopted, from a far away land. And pray every child has a good teacher.

Cary Ballet Conservatory “Aspiring Dancers” 18 May 2019

Midnight Ice Cream – II

Sometimes, especially for old photographers, sleep is elusive. This, from almost exactly six years ago, was a child seeking refuge from Stage Fright. And the image has stayed in memory. I know exactly how she feels.

Cary Ballet Conservatory “Aspiring Dancers” 18 May 2019

Muse Redux

Late in 2018, I decided to let go of film & medium format cameras. New digital versions were astronomically expensive and the film versions were costly, in money and time.

This photograph is from a last portrait session with a Pentax 645N Film Camera and Kodak Ektar film. Had the film processed and scanned the negatives myself. The process after that is just the same as a Digital Negative.

But that’s not what this is about. It’s about Art and Artists. Which explains the rolls of Ektar film in my frig., that fit my 1914 Kodak Autographic Junior & 1925 Kodak Brownie Model F.

Old guy, responsible me, has been mulling selling my post widower, post house sale purchased, 645 Digital Gear. Nah. The Muse Provides. I got plans.

Portrait Session at Cary Ballet Conservatory – May 2018

Still Learning

By now, I though I’d be further along, organizing and curating a dozen years of work at Cary Ballet Conservatory. The delay is mostly due to the luxury of quiet time and vivid memory. And reflection. An example is this photograph.

Eight years earlier, her Mom hired me to make photographs of her First Communion at the Church Altar. A new and agreeable Monsignor literally gave his blessing to me working during the Mass.

Cary Ballet Company: Space & Tech Rehearsal, 13 March 2019 – Cary Arts Center

One year later, nearly to the day after I made this photograph, there was another Space & Tech Rehearsal for the 2020 production – just days before COVID cancelled pretty much everything. And that Fall, I became a widower.

Things sort of got back to normal by late 2022 – but my “creative spirit” tank was on fumes and I retired.

Now my goal is to share what I learned about Craft and Art. Working on that!

Bitter Sweet

Today, FedEx delivered a lens that I’ve spent six months searching for. Bought my first copy around 2010, just as it was discontinued by the mfr. Paid $1,400 then, a sum of intense discussion between my newly corporate laid off self and my late wife. But embarking on my encore career, I’d promised myself I’d never miss another photograph of an actor because I lacked the right gear. That it was a youth theater performance, was to me, irrelevant.

Sold it after she died, with a bunch of other gear, no longer used or needed by a retired photographer.

Cary Ballet Company, March 2019

And then recently, volunteered to photograph, pro bono, some Elementary School events. Which caused me to look for a replacement that was, like a Hens’s Tooth, not to be found. So, bought some almost wannabe lenses that just didn’t resonate. And will be sold soon. Here’s the bittersweet part.

Covid changed everything. And caused an exciting, beautiful young dancer to return to Latin America. And unable to cope with his illness and crushed dreams, ended his life.

Bravo!

I made this photograph in January of 2022, about 10 months before age & widower grief convinced me to retire. And I remember being struck by the artistry of a very young woman. Told her that plainly, afterward, in the lobby, in the presence of her father.

This evening, at A J Fletcher Opera Theater in Raleigh, I watched her dance the lead role in the ballet “Coppelia”. I can’t even imagine the work she’s invested in her craft since. But I know great art when I see it. Makes life worth living.

Ain’t No Money In Poetry*

*”Cold Dog Soup” by Guy Clark

The last time I visited with this young dancer was during a Saturday Studio Session. I’d hired her to guide young dancer audition sessions. She had all the technical dance foundation I didn’t. Some “No Shows” allowed time to visit.

And we discussed how even though she had a contract with a professional Ballet Company, when she looked at the hours, it was barely minimum wage.

Later, I learned she went back to university and then entered the corporate world for far better money. Art is really, really hard.

Space & Tech – 3D Jazz Project Co. at Cary Ballet Conservatory Cary Arts Center – 18 April 2012

Permanent Collection

I knew the print was still hanging on the second floor of the Cary Arts Center but had no idea it was in the Town’s Website: Four Off The Floor

It’s well intended but displays the picture maker reflected in the glass (which I no longer use on displayed prints). And the focus is really soft.

Here’s what I wish it was displayed as:

Space & Tech Rehearsal – 3D Jazz Project Co. at Cary Ballet Conservatory Cary Arts Center – 18 April 2012

Re-Engaging – American Girls

True story. Made this photograph in the “Annex” of the since sold & relocated Cary Ballet Conservatory. A Mom from the 3D Project Jazz Company left me a voice mail message (remember voice mail). Which I listened to on my laptop speakers in a Paris Apartment. Replied, we were flying home next day and yes, I could do a Sunday promo shoot.

No time to plan or rent gear.

Did have a 5 by 9 ft piece of black velour from Joann Fabrics. My late wife had sewn in rod pockets for hanging as a background. They’re laying on it.

Had one light up on a boom but was standing on a shaky piece of the lobby furniture while the Instructor, a big man named Yaqshaan Medan, was holding my belt & waist band, while I reached out over the very young dancers, with back button focus. And it worked!

Which explains why I entered it, this week, into a Digital Only Open Juried Photograph Completion.

That’s a lie – the real reason is, I have to remember to breathe when I look at it.

1 October 2017

The Muse Provides – Again

Written about this before. The idea keeps revisiting me. It’s been 13 years since I made this photograph but I know the date and venue, like it was a tattoo. This young dancer, in full stage makeup and street clothes was, to my astonishment, my very first experience with a “Muse”. Trust me on this, Muses are very, very real. She and this appearance, changed my work and understanding of light for the next decade. And she appeared, in another form, 10 years later. And is currently helping with the nascent outline of a book (s).

As an “Old Guy” on the backend of my life on this planet, it is wonderful to be free to read and think (and cook) sans the pressure of all the stuff that younger folks are pressured by. No Mo Fomo ;-).

Cary Arts Center 12 December 2012

Sunday Reflection II

Yesterday afternoon at the North Carolina Museum of Art got my creative wheels in gear. Working in theater was always magical to me. Especially with no audience to disturb and freedom to move around. I never found it work.

Cary Ballet Conservatory Rehearsal for “Cinderella” 11 June 2014

Sunday Reflection

I was on the edge of digital camera technology, in December of 2010. 14+ years later, this is still in my heart. Time since, allowed me to learn how to take an image to what I saw. And it’s good to have training as a painter. Caravaggio and Edward Hopper would understand. 20″x 16″ Print on order.

Cary Ballet Company Dress Rehearsal “A Gift For The Little Match Girl” 17 Dec. 2010, Jones Auditorium at Meredith College – Raleigh, North Carolina

My Favorite Things #3

Studio Rehearsal “Little Match Girl” 11 Dec 2010 – Cary Ballet Conservatory

I had no experience making photographs of a studio rehearsal. 14 Decembers later, this is still, vivid memory. It was an affirmation of joy without guile. An expression of, the best of us.

Thankful

June 2016 – Wakefield High School Auditorium

The luxury of age is time, without demands. Today, while still surfacing from a nasty head cold and long before my slow cooker of really good collards are ready, I played a DVD of the Cary Ballet Conservatory Recital of June 2016, “Anastasia”.

I have it because I made a courtesy head shot of the Videographer, Jeff Philips at InFocusStudios. Watching it today, reminded me of just how lucky I was to find the right place for me, as a photographer. And it dusted off my memory, remembering their stories and families. I was extraordinarily lucky.

These two will renew your faith in humanity. And danced, wonderfully!

Deja Vu III – We Are The World

3D Jazz Project Promo Session – Feb. 2019 – Cary Ballet Conservatory

Long, long ago, I was the resident Field Tech at NASA’s Glenn Research Center (nee Lewis Research Center) for the long gone, Digital Equipment Corporation.

Pretty sure the Scientists & Engineers & Techs I worked with, would approve.

The background image is NASA’s. The foreground is mine.

The photograph is all of us.

Deja Vu II

The latest version of these prints shipped from my lab today. So did the Nielsen Profile 13 Float Frames that will mount & place them on my apt. wall.

I saw a Herb Ritts Exhibit at Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris, Oct. , 2016. Stuff you can’t make up – a 5 minute walk from our apt. in Marais.

Dry mounted prints on standouts in float frames. No glass or mattes. Nothing to get between the viewer and photograph. Meme chose.

3D Promo – Feb. 2020
CBC Recital Rehearsal – June 2011

The Windows In Studio A #1

Cary Ballet Professional Training Program – ADC Preview – 26 Jan 2022

I am well and comfortably retired and my work still resonates in my heart.

I know that I will show and write about photographs I made by the light of the “Windows In Studio A”. Like all things, it has, like me since changed. As has the young dancer shown here. Who I admired and found to be a perceptive and thoughtful assistant in studio sessions. Some images stay in memory.

State Of Grace

Digital cameras allowed me to make hundreds of thousands of photographs in low light with high shutter speeds to freeze motion. And yes, I paid for “fast glass”, f2.8 & f4 but it was wonderful.

What I think matters, is the idea. The Art. Among those half million plus shutter clicks, some stay in memory. This is one. I’d write something about an English Music Hall but sometimes, words are inadequate. This from 2016.

Double Whammy

Opera Bastille – Paris, 2017

The opening Clarinet glissando in Gershwin’s “Rhapsody In Blue”, I love – as did and does, United Airlines.

And had me guessing if it was possible with a Trumpet, during last night’s performance by the Cary Ballet Company of “Who Cares”. A Google search assures me, a Trumpet is capable of a glissando.

Walking On Sunshine

Cary Ballet Professional Training Program – Valentina Facal

ADC Studio Preview 25 Jan. 2022 – And don’t it feel good!

Prompted by a delightful conversation today with a 50 year younger neighbor while bringing in groceries. Sunshine modeled her face and I almost went into Portrait Photographer mode. Didn’t. And spared her my latest Old Guy joke.

Seriously?

Cary Ballet Company Spring Gala – Space & Tech Rehearsal – 13 March 2013

News of the day can make sleep, elusive. My remedy is revisiting some favorites, like this one. The digital image is medicine for my analog soul.

And thinking about it, at 3 AM, is part of a currently low priority background task running between my ears, a gestation period for writing a book about the Craft & Art of Photography. I aim to make it my task beginning next fall, and occupy me through the winter.

My immediate and necessarily higher priority program, is transitioning to a sustainable, old widower habitat – sans every Thursday HoA Landscape Contractor Leaf Blowers!

First Position

Cary Ballet – “Celebration Of Children In The Arts” Oct 2013

I was 100% ignorant of Ballet when I discovered Cary Ballet in 2010.

Deanna Seay, seen above, invited me to just come and watch her classes. And I thought “This is hard – really hard! Baseball and Basketball and Football is easy compared to this.” Then I surfed the Web-O-Sphere about her and discovered how much I didn’t know. She was very kind.

Reading the news, I wish this for young people. Not Hate, Hunger or War.

Graceful

Cary Ballet Conservatory – 2013

As I explained to some folks yesterday, some images stay in memory. This is one. This week, on my almost daily walk, I saw the shadow of a large wing span. Looking up, I expected to see a Vulture, properly attending a recently departed neighborhood Squirrel. It was, in glorious surprise, a Great Blue Heron, who with astonishing wingspan, navigated between two houses into the ravine behind that begins Clemmons Educational State Forest . And I wondered how it survived the fertilizer and pesticides of the Golf Course behind it. Like finding a Rose in Snow, despite the Plows and Salt.

In The Moment

I started writing about photography recently  mostly to help some friends and students understand some principles of the Craft.  That part is the “How”.  Gaining that knowledge gives you a chance at the other part, the “Why” or Art.  I was going to write about making this image. About why it’s important to learn and understand lighting, composition and posing.  All those things are important but still, mostly craft.  After staring at this blank narrative for a long time, I realized everything I had to say was in the photograph. The key is something no camera can provide. Universally, every dancer I’ve met, from high school students to principals in major companies, said the performance on stage, those few minutes of a lifetime, make it all worth it.  It is, the moment, the clarity, the poetry, the magic of the best expression of ourselves, creating something that transcends the mortal and the specific. Which is why, as an artist, the few minutes of my lifetime it took to make this portrait are worth the years it took to reach them. The proof print of this image is much richer than any electronic display. That image, that moment, I hope her children will share.

Senior Portrait Session, Cary Ballet Conservatory, April 2015

Before The Call – First Dress

Chapel Hill High School

Last week, Monday through Sunday, I photographed the dress rehearsals and performances of “Anastasia”, a production of the Ballet and Jazz  Companies of the Cary Ballet Conservatory.   21+ hours of rehearsals and 5 performances with 300 plus dancers in each.  This was made before the first rehearsal