HI, I’M TREVOR NIELSON
I AM A DANCE AND MOVEMENT PHOTOGRAPHER BASED IN UTAH
The journey that brought me here wasn’t exactly a straightforward one. I certainly get a lot of strange looks when I tell old friends that I’ve switched my career in software engineering to pursue movement and dance photography. It’s kind of a long story to explain how I got here.
I got my first camera for Christmas in 1984. It was a blue Fisher Price / Kodak 110 camera. It had film so small, it was barely taller than a pencil. But I loved it. Growing up, my mom was a photographer for our local newspaper, so we had a darkroom in our house. There is something magical about processing your own film. I have pursued many hobbies throughout the years, but photography has always stuck.
MOVEMENT
College is where I realized I enjoyed challenging fast-paced movement photography. I joined the university newspaper staff and began shooting sporting events. I shot all kinds of events, football, baseball, soccer, track & field to name a few. But the one that I found especially fun was gymnastics because it was so challenging. Gymnastics is especially tricky because of three major factors:
- You can’t shoot next to them so you have to use a long lens
- The lighting is on the dim side
- The gymnast moves very quickly
It becomes extremely technical to focus on and freeze quick moving action in low light situations.
DANCE
I have four daughters and a son. Three of my daughters took dance, which meant driving them back and forth to class and eventually performances. We enjoy attending their shows, so eventually wanted to attend more, so we started going to Ballet West and other dance company performances as well.
When I started considering a career change I chose dance and movement photography because not only is it beautiful and artistic, but it’s also very challenging technically – both from a photography standpoint as well as from the dance perspective. So it feeds both my artistic side as well as my technical side. That’s the fun part for me, creating beauty despite having to overcome huge technical challenges.
I also quickly learned how much of a difference I can make in the lives of dancers. Dancers are repeatedly critiqued, corrected and have become hyper aware of how they look. I’ve found they can easily forget the beauty they convey with their art. Dance photography opens up an amazing door for them to fall in love with their own work again.
So if you’d like to come join me in creating dance art, I would love to have you! Send me a message with what you’re interested in and let’s get talking about it!
I’m looking forward to working with you!