From Beach Shoots to Indoor Experiments in Dance Photography

This was a shoot I was so excited for, so I knew I needed to get everything right before going ahead with it.


Light painting is something I’ve experimented with before, a good few years ago, but it was never really dance-focused. It was more car lights and playing around with sparklers, so I understood the basics — but I never really knew how to incorporate dancers into it, especially with their still poses and using flash… or so I thought.

 

I planned this shoot as a two-parter — the first part at the beach, and the second indoors in a studio setting.


Originally, the plan was actually the other way around. But when I saw there was a beautiful night coming up, I knew I had to take advantage of it — so we went for the beach shoot first.


During lockdown, my favourite hobby I picked up was flow arts with an LED Levi wand. It’s basically dancing with a stick attached to a string, creating the illusion that it’s floating — and I instantly knew this would be the perfect tool for light painting.

 

So we headed down to Cramond, where we managed to get some beautiful golden hour photos before the well-needed blue hour for the light painting to take place.


I told the ambassadors to make sure they wrapped up — it was going to be a cold one. Did I think they’d actually build a fire to keep warm? No. Did they do it anyway and document the whole thing like a mini vlog? Of course they did.


Once the fire was set up and blue hour started creeping in, we got straight into it.


I set my camera up on a tripod, got my flashes ready, and ran a few test shots. We started with a 5-second self-timer to eliminate any shake, paired with a 5-second shutter speed and the flash firing first. But I quickly realised that if the dancers couldn’t hold their pose perfectly still, they started to turn into ghosts — which was not the vibe.


So we brought the shutter down to 2.5 seconds… and that was the sweet spot.


From there, we just got stuck in. It was a full team effort — everyone running around with the LED wand, creating shapes, testing ideas, and figuring it out as we went. A lot of trial and error, but that’s half the fun of it.


We even had a really sweet moment where a passer-by and their dog accidentally photobombed one of the shots. But because of the long exposure, it picked up the dog’s LED collar — and it actually added to the photo. One of those little mistakes that completely pays off. I showed the owner after, and they thought it was hilarious.

Now we move onto the indoor shoot, which was held at the Music Box at Sighthill College — perfect for that full blackout vibe.



I started off with some more “normal” shots, using the flashes to capture jumps with a bit of colour. However… in true Shan luck, one of my flashes was not playing ball.



We powered on anyway, because this wasn’t the main event of the shoot — the light painting was. And realistically, I only needed one solid key flash to make it work.


Thankfully, I finally managed to get my LED wand to change colours (which it absolutely refused to do at the beach 🙃). I let each dancer pick their own colours for their poses, which was such a nice touch — it really let their personalities come through in the final images.



I experimented with a few different techniques — running along the back to create wave effects, then switching it up by staying closer to the dancers and creating shapes like halos, rainbows, and flowers around them.



The flower-style light trails were definitely my favourite.

Overall, this shoot was such a mix of trial and error, patience, and a lot of running around in the dark — but that’s exactly what made it so rewarding. Not everything went perfectly (shoutout to my flashes for keeping me on my toes), but that’s part of the process, and honestly where some of the best results come from.


From the calm, natural tones of the beach to the controlled chaos of the studio, it really showed how versatile light painting can be. Two completely different environments, but both creating something just as striking in their own way.


I’m so proud of what we created as a team — and huge credit to my ambassadors for trusting the process, even when I was saying “right… one more time” for the tenth time.


If this is something you’d love to try, whether it’s a creative dance shoot, light painting, or something completely different, I’m always up for bringing new ideas to life.


Because sometimes the best shots come from a little bit of chaos… and a lot of light.