This was the first shoot Isabella Hoy and I did together. We hit it off and created some epic stills in a photo studio located in downtown Los Angeles.

Here’s my favorite shots from the shoot + a few questions for Isabella herself!

Give us a short introduction!

Hello! My name is Isabella Hoy. I was born in St.Louis, MO, but CA is my home and has been for the past seventeen years. Although I have been teaching ballet for three years now, I only recently began dancing again. Having stopped dance at the age of fourteen, I feel so grateful to be able to dance again at twenty-three. So, for the past few months my life has been class, class, and more class. When I’m not dancing or teaching, you’ll probably find me reading or spending time with my incredible family and friends for whom I am so fortunate to have in my life.

What places do you want to travel to the most?

I’m ready to go back to Italy, like… right away! However, at the top of my list right now, I would also include Japan, Amsterdam, Ireland, and Spain.

Who’s your current favorite dance choreographer at the moment?

I’ve been watching a lot of Fredrick Ashton’s work, so I would have to say Mr. Ashton at the moment!

Pizza or burgers?

Pizza (but by that I mean my bisnonna/great grandmother’s handmade Sicilian pizza!).

Do you need white noise to sleep? Or silence?

Ah yes, the sound of rain and crickets is very soothing to me.

Do you like comedy? (If so, what’re some of your favorite comedy shows or movies?)

Oh, this is such a difficult question, there are too many to name, so I’ll just say the first movie that comes to mind is “The Frisco Kid” and the first show that comes to mind is “Fleabag”.

What’s a piece of art (movie, painting, play, ballet, broadway, television show, book, song, poem, etc..) That moved you the most this year so far?

I find poetry incredibly inspiring and it truly adds such depth and beauty to my life. I have a notebook where I write down every poem that speaks to me in someway. Out of the hundreds of poems and quotes in there, the one I’m thinking of now is “Ithaka” by C.P. Cavafy

What do you enjoy about dancing?

I’ve been enchanted by ballet since I was two years old. So I shall say to dance is to live.

What’s something people might not know about you?

Literature, music, and acting has always and continues to be a large part of my life.

Would you rather cook 20 pies or rollerblade 20 miles?

I love to cook so I’d absolutely bake those twenty pies.

You can follow Isabella on IG here

Till next time,

-Oliver

If you’ve spent any time on the dance side of the internet, you’ve probably come across photos of Alyssa Fenolio. As a professional dancer and model, she regularly travels the US and shoots with many talented dance and fashion photographers.

Alyssa and I usually shoot 2-3 times a year. Most recently we shot in Denver Colorado and then Los Angeles California.

For our Denver shoot, we created images with massive angel wings.

I really enjoyed shooting with this wing prop. Ballet lines and wings easily mesh because they both create S curve shapes. (The wing curve creates the same line as a winged ballet foot line)

Another style we explored on our Denver shoot was a Noir vibe.

Noir refers to a genre of film.

“The 1940s and 1950s are generally regarded as the "classic period" of American film noir. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key, black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography.“ - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir

There’s so much mystery built into the style of Noir. (low light, hats covering the face, etc..) On top of the lack of color + specific lighting, body language is especially important in creating the mood of a Noir-style image. (Body language in all of photography is fun because it’s a non-verbal form of communication. There isn’t any dialogue in photos, but you are still being communicated to by the pose of the person in the photo, and these photos of Alyssa are no exception.)

Now let’s dive into the most recent shoot we did in Los Angeles, California.

This was a new space we shot at in downtown Los Angeles. It had lots of open space, natural light, as well as some fun props like that wavy chair and the oddly shaped circle.