Love, Freedom and Vitality As Seen In A Woman Leaping High Into The Sky In Front Of A Heart Shaped Cloud.

Love is expressed, along with freedom, vitality and energy, in this photo of an African American dancer (woman), who is wearing a red dress and leaping up into the sky in front of a heart-shaped cloud. This exuberant image shows the joy we feel when in love, the energy and vitality we feel, and the sense of expansiveness that love brings. The woman's red dress is evocative of the color of the heart and works hand-in-hand with the heart to emphasize the concepts of love and emotion. What a perfect Valentine's day image! In further support of the love theme is the dancer's pose which invokes the sense of total abandonment and release into love. The liberal use of space (blue sky) in the frame adds to the feelings of expansion and abandonment into love and feeling. If I had to use one word to describe this photograph it would indeed be the word love, followed closely by the word joy.

Collaboration, Creativity, and the Production Of Stock Photography

Collaboration is an often over-looked method for increasing both stock photography creativity and stock photo production. This image came into being when photographer Tanya Constantine suggested that I use some dancer photography of hers to create some new stock images. In this particular shot the models pose looked to me as if she were being pulled upwards by some invisible force. I immediately thought of alien abductions. I looked through my files and found a shot of New York shot from the roof top of a moderately tall building. It was perfect. I used an adjustment layer to lighten a portion of the image to create the effect of a beam of light. Then I stripped out the model using the pen tool, in Photoshop, to create a clipping path. I made the path into a selection with a 1 pixel feather. I kept the path, and thereby the selection, just inside the outside of the model, with the exception of her hair. I could not pen tool the individual hairs, which were also blurred somewhat from the motion. Instead, I used a layer mask to fade the hair into the background of the beam of light. Collaboration can be a tricky business. Someone has to take responsibility for collection and distribution of royalties...which on an image like this will essentially be forever. Egos have to be put aside too. Joint decisions need to be made on who the distributor will be and whether the image will be a Royalty Free image, a Rights Managed image, or some other business model.

Uses for a picture of a woman dancer leaping into the sky

A woman dancer leaping high into the sky, in front of a heart shaped cloud, makes a great concept stock picture. It can be used to illustrate many concepts including but not limited too; Freedom, love, joy, vitality, energy, success, healthy living, standing out from the crowd, and happiness. The image is extremely versatile as well. This photo can be cropped vertically, as in a magazine cover or rack brochure, horizontally as in a magazine spread or billboard, or even square. The image is also a quick read in thumbnail sizes which makes it excellent for web use as well. The colors are rich and vibrant and grab a viewer's attention. There is plenty of negative space, open sky area, for the placement of headlines and body copy. Text-rich uses can make great use of this image.