English National Ballet dancer Anaïs Chalendard prepares to make her entrance and meet her prince on stage during The Nutcracker at The Coliseum Theatre in London.

Anaïs Chalendard prepares to make an entrance during The Nutcracker. © Patrick Baldwin 2011

Click on an image and be taken to my Photoshelter archive to see more and buy an image if you wish. Happy browsing.

The secret is out. After hiding for days undetected in a flight case backstage at English National Ballet in order to obtain this world exclusive photograph I can now reveal how English National Ballet store their dancers at night! I always wondered why nobody ever saw them leave by the stage door after the show. Now we know. They hang them up in the wings along with their costumes! They are all there like bats hanging. The only difference is they are not upside down.

I was horrified and appalled until I realised that the dancer pictured Desiree was smiling. It actually makes them happy. Amazing.

More secrets as and when I can bring them. Its a dangerous job but somebody has to do it.

Dancer Desiree Ballantyne in "storage" for the night. © Patrick Baldwin 2010. All rights reserved.

This is the first time I have photographed flamenco. So I started at the top! Sara Baras is one of the finest flamenco dancers in the world and appeared at The Royal Albert Hall. The energy that she and her entire company displayed was extraordinary. It was all quiet passion punctuated with moments of sheer violence in the dancing. The speed of her footwork is astonishing. I was told she was carrying an injury. I’m not at all surprised but you would never have guessed from watching her. My Spanish friend and fellow photographer Marian Alonso was furiously jealous of me photographing her.

Photography at the Albert Hall has its own challenges. There are a lot of places where I can get into a great position for an image but almost invariably it is during an actual performance. As far as I am concerned if people have paid money to be there then I have no right to compromise their enjoyment by distracting them with my camera. With this in mind I am always as discreet as possible…as discreet as its possible to be while wearing three cameras with long lenses attached! I have never had any complaints yet. Actually a lot of people are quite interested in what I’m doing so I usually have to answer a few questions during intervals which I’m quite happy to do. Any noise from my cameras shutters was completely buried by the amplified sound of the shoes on the stage. It was like machine gun fire at times.

The image below was taken from the front at one end of the stage area about twenty feet away. Between me and her was an immovable object in the shape of a Buddha like security guard so I had to shoot either side of him chasing her round the stage with my 300mm lens.

Hopefully I captured some of her amazing passion.

Sara Baras © 2010 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.

A photograph from Arthur Pita’s production “God’s Garden” at the Linbury Studio.

Taken at 1/13th sec f2.8 @ 2500 ISO without a tripod this shot would have been impossible to take handheld as little as eight years ago. The advancement of digital imaging combined with vibration reducing lens technology and cameras that can see in the dark without adding noise to the image make this kind of image an everyday possibility.

Diana Payne-Myers and José Manuel Figueira in Arthur Pita's "God's Garden". © 2010 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.

I am delighted to say I carried out my first commission for the Royal Albert Hall recently. I have photographed a lot there in the past but I was always working for a different client.

I got to photograph something that I always find amazing which is ballroom dancing. This event was the International Ballroom Dancing Competition which is staged there every year. My brief was to capture the event in the Albert Hall rather than cover the winners and so on.

It is the most fun I’ve had in ages.

As a technical note the first image below was shot at ¹⁄₂₀th sec @ f2.8 at 6400 ISO. It was dark in there! And in case anybody is wondering I am on top of my digital colour management:-)

A contestant watches her peers. © 2009 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Ballroom dancing in full swing. © 2009 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.

These images are of Guiseppe Picone and Rebecca Sewell of English National Ballet performing in Giselle. Taken during a performance at the Manchester Palace Theatre. There is a bridge running across the width of the stage just behind the proscenium arch. I worked for English National Ballet for 12 years or so on the stage crew so I know my way around the backstage of a theatre. On this occasion I went up after the interval and waited. I had one camera and a 70-200 lens with the lens hood taped up. Dropping anything at all at this point would have been a terminal career move to say the least and of course could have seriously injured one or both of the dancers. An SLR and zoom lens dropping from 35 ft would be very painful I’m sure.

I was shooting on transparency in those days, around 1995 I think. Ektachrome T320 tungsten balanced pushed at least one stop if not two. Wide open at 2.8 and probably a 30th of second with me wedged into the catwalk. At least they were not running around dancing so a slow shutter speed was ok and framing was easy. No bracketing or “chimping” the screen on the back to check everything.

It looks like Guiseppe is looking straight at me but he cannot see me because there is a bar full of lights between me and him. I was a little disconcerted though. The last thing I want to do is distract a dancer when he is supposed to be dying!

In those pre digital camera days I was scanning everything to get a digital file although the only retouching on these images is to take out a seam in the dance floor lino.

© Patrick Baldwin 1995. All rights reserved.

© Patrick Baldwin 1995. All rights reserved.

Begona Cào, dancer with English National Ballet waits in the wings, on the left, before making her entrance, on the right. These photographs were taken during her second performance of English National Ballet’s production of Manon at the London Coliseum theatre. When I spoke to her about her debut performance she said she had cherished every moment and it was what she had been waiting for from the start of her career. What impressed me was that no nerves got in her way. She just enjoyed every moment.

More of Begona and the whole of the production can be seen in my Photoshelter gallery.

Begona Cào waits in the wings then makes her entrance. © 2009 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.

This image is from English National Ballet’s new production of Manon which can be seen at the London Coliseum Theatre  from the 2nd of January 2009. This is the best looking show visually that ENB have ever produced as far as I’m concerned.

The transcendentally beautiful Begona Cào who is the subject of this picture is making her debut in the role on Saturday the 3rd of January 2009 in the matinee at 2.30.

Call me a big fan!

Begona Cào. © 2008 Patrick Baldwin. All rights reserved.