Dance Shoot June 2026 with Jack Thomson

In June I spent a day in the studio with dancer and photographer Jack Thomson, alongside Evie Leigh Savage and Kacper Lajewski, for an open-ended exploration of dance, movement and light.

I brought in a selection of my Profoto lighting along with continuous lights, without too fixed an idea of what the final photographs needed to look like. The intention was really to experiment — changing the position, quality and intensity of the light and seeing how the dancers responded to it.

We moved between very controlled, sculptural lighting and more unpredictable approaches, sometimes freezing a gesture and at other times allowing movement to blur through the frame. As the shoot developed we began stripping things back and trying increasingly simple light sources — at one point working with little more than a handheld torch.

What I particularly enjoyed was the collaborative nature of the day. Working with dancers who have such an acute awareness of shape, balance and their relationship to space meant that lighting could become another part of the choreography. A small shift in the direction of a light, the angle of a body or the length of an exposure could completely change the image.

And then there was the snake — an entirely unexpected addition to the shoot, but a very welcome one. It introduced another kind of movement and unpredictability and gave us something completely different to respond to.

The resulting photographs are less about documenting individual dance movements and more about exploring the relationship between body, light, shadow and movement — which was exactly what I wanted the day to be about.