In September of 2012, I was on a shoot with a model who mentioned she was a ballet dancer and we discussed getting together to photograph her in the dance studio. I always thought ballet was a beautiful form of expression so I decided to step outside my comfort zone — the fashion and swimsuit genres I have been shooting for years — and photograph ballet dancers. I started to search the web for ballet images to see what was out there and I immediately fell in love with the lines, arches, poses and leaps in the photographs I discovered.

But I wanted to capture these talented dancers in a different way. My vision was to photograph these beautiful ballerinas in places that they would not normally be seen — the yin yang of ballet, if you will. As I was stepping out of my comfort zone, I decided the only constraints I would place on this project were threefold, that everyone I photographed had to be a true ballet dancer, all photographs would be in black & white, and that I would have one year to complete the project. From this process, Unbalanced Ballet was born.

This book contains the 30 image series featuring 9 beautiful ballerinas, 18 outtake photos and 8 behind the scenes stories explaining what we went through to capture these amazing images!