Serena in London

Backstory

I first connected with Serena McCall back in 2020 during Covid lockdown. Serena had collaborated with a dance brand for a competition where dancers from all over the world could tune into her Insta Live to learn a choreography, they then had to post the video of themselves dancing it. Space for all competitors was limited to either a bedroom, kitchen, garden etc. Serena very cleverly created a piece that would work for all levels and all space limitations. Anyway, by the work of fate my daughter took the opportunity to enter and was chosen as the winner which was amazing and somewhat serendipitous. I reached out to serena about a year later when I was looking for a dancer to test shoot with in a London studio. Those photos are some of my faves of all time.

Fast forward two years and much has happened in both of our lives. Serena graduated from Rambert and began working as a professional dancer in many projects, most notably for the touring dance show 'Message in a Bottle', directed by Kate Prince with music by Sting. For the role of Roxanne, Serena was required to have a distinctive look and chose to dye her platinum blonde hair a vibrant red. Serena saw that I was planning to travel to London and asked if I’d be able to shoot her some photos with her new look. Of course I jumped at the chance.

Location

The setting had to complement Serena’s look without competing or clashing with her Red hair. I looked for somewhere ideally with a red palette, so parks where out! red and green only go together at Christmas guys! Also, she had to wear something that gave balance and harmony to the composition so I told her to go for black. I had heard about Leadenhall Market in the city of London for its impressive architecture and when I checked on google was delighted to see that the dark cherry wood and deep red features on the facade would work with the aesthetic I was going for. Being that this is a working market with a bustling flow of traffic throughout the entire day we decided on a mid week early morning which pretty much gave us the whole space to ourselves for about 30mins before it became impossible. This restricted our ability to try other outfit options and just did the one look. Serena was clever enough to wear layers so adding and taking off one or two items helped bring a little variety.

As we still had a little time we went off in search of another location and within a short distance found a small street where the light bounced well off of the glass panelled windows of one of the buildings. Serena quick changed into an Intermezzo leotard and we shot these dance pics

and finished with these portraits <3