Tappin' with Savion Glover

Next week, the January issue of Inside Jersey magazine will run a profile on famed tap dancer Savion Glover, for which I shot the cover and the inside double-truck image.

I really wanted to approach this shoot differently. After brainstorming with editors, we came up with a few portrait ideas, including creating a multiple-exposure of him as performed. That would freeze him at different moments in one image.

If you don't know how to do this, here's how: Put your camera on the bulb setting, which keeps the shutter open once you depress the button and leaves it open until you release the button. While the shutter is open, you manually trigger the lights several times as your subject moves. With Savion, I asked him to dance across the studio floor in front of a white screen, while I triggered the lights and kept the shutter open. That froze him at different moments. Once I reached my desired number of flashes, I released the shutter button, ending the shot.

We did this many times - analyzing the result after each attempt. I shot more than 300 images during a photo that lasted two hours. Usually celebrities don't give photographers that much time (usually, they only grant more like 5 to 10 minutes). But Savion was patient - he wanted as cool and interesting an image as we did.

Nyier Abdou, one of the Star-Ledger videographers, produced a behind-the-scenes video about the photo shoot.

You can find the link below. Enjoy!

Behind-the-scenes photo shoot with Savion Glover.