Winners of the photoshoot competition
In January of this year I decided that I wanted to widen my circle of dance, circus, aerial and pole performers and so decided to run an Instagram competition to win a private photoshoot worth £250.
Although I don’t have the largest Instagram following I still managed to receive over 100 entries from all over the country. All ages, all kinds of skills, all kinds of abilities. They all looked worthy of winning and I was grateful to be able to use a random generator on the computer to choose a winner for me.
Out popped the very wonderful name of Ziggy Starlett an aerial performer from Stoke on Trent. She chose to share this shoot with her team partner the Circus Witch and they perform under the name Pumpkin Spiced Lyra (yes there is a story attached to that name - you need to ask them).
After much too’ing and fro’ing they acquired studio space for March at Pole Fit in Stoke on Trent run by Faye.
When the time came I tootled up there with a friend to assist and found they had prepared our own room to use as we wish. This was fantastic as the rest of the studio was being used for lessons and training and so we didn’t have to worry about cables and smoke getting in the way of others.
Ziggy Starlett (Rachel) and Circus Witch (Tori) were really cool. They had been training and prepared a series of moves they wanted to capture specifically for this photoshoot. From initial discussions I knew they wanted to go for the whole ‘stage performance’ look, which meant setting up the special effects, smoke machine and split lighting with coloured gels.
They then spent a good 3 hours pulling themselves up, over and around the hoop creating all kinds of impressive shapes with pointy toes. This is a major upper body work for the best of them and they did this apparently without much visible effort looking elegant and calm thoughout.
Jim who was helping me, thought this wasn’t as difficult as it looked and so while they were changing between sets, he tried to get on the hoop. After a few minutes of huffing and puffing, he just managed to get his feet off the floor. With renewed respect he went back to the smoke machine muttering something about knowing where his true skills and talents lay.
Here’s just a few of the awesome shapes and images we produced together. They were definitely worthy winners and I just wish I could do the same for all the other entrants.
It was a great success and a joy once again to meet such enthusiastic professional aerialists. Maybe I’ll run another competition again later in the year. I’m currently looking for local ballet dancers close to Worcester for another project. If you know any tell them to get in touch
Shortly after I received this lovely note from them;
Imagine our surprise to win the online Instagram competition! Bob has been amazing from start to finish & completely open to letting us choose the concept of our shoot. Bob & his assistant Jim met us at our chosen location and made us feel completely at ease from the beginning. We were shown our previews throughout the shoot & given directions to get the absolute best set of images possible. Both of us felt totally relaxed & comfortable through out our day which went very very quick! 100% would recommend a shoot with Bob as he’s friendly and an all round professional, we’ve been completely in awe of the photos we received!