After spending the last 5 years, crafting my brand through working with athletes and promoting sport, I’ve many times come upon a situation where a line has to be drawn to establish what is and what is not a sport. After much deliberation, I’ve come to the conclusion that if you are physically pushing your body and mind to the limit to achieve a defined goal then you are most likely doing a sport. That’s what we have here, Pole Dancing. It’s a sport, and I’ll explain why.

Pole dancing, is an age old discipline that involves coordination, concentration and a shear amount of physical strength. This is the recipe required to make the performances seem effortless to those watching. Having never photographed the discipline before, I got the opportunity to work with Danielle Reed, a talent pole athlete. Danielle competes in two of the three categories established by the sport, Pole Sport and Pole Exotic.

What is the difference Pole Sport and Pole Exotic?

Well the short answer is, in Pole Sport the athletes do not wear heels and in Exotic they do. But obviously there is more to it. In Pole Sport the athletes focus is more on the execution of aerobatics, technique difficultly and less so on their dance moves and choreography. It is very similar to gymnastics and the skillsets required are almost identical except pole athletes will require much more grip strength. 

In Pole Exotic, the athletes focus on choreography and their degree of flexibility. Platform heels are used to extend the athlete’s lines and they give the appearance of longer legs. These longer lines also add to their perceived range of motion when it comes to moves that require a high degree of flexibility.  Pole Exotic is more expressionistic and the routines are often more sensual and offers a high degree of sex appeal. However I feel that this can often distract us from realizing the time and effort the athletes put in to perfecting this discipline. 

What have I learned?

When photographing Pole Exotic, the main question I had was what does the athlete want to see in the images from their routine? Danielle pointed out that the main focus was her flexibility, more specifically how well she can break her ankle. In other words, the more the heel of her platform can point adjacent to her leg, the better. After learning this, I swapped lenses, discarding my 85mm and going for the 20mm. With a wide lens I was able to make her heel look somewhat larger than life due to the natural distortion characteristic of the lens. This in turn exaggerated the heel break that Danielle wanted to see. 

Also who would have known that there are different types of poles used in the sport and each offers different degrees of stickiness! The brass poles offer the most tackiness where as the silver/chrome poles are less sticky and the temperature of the pole needs to be raised prior to the athlete’s routine for the best performance.

On the note of stickiness, these athletes rely very much on their skin to grip to the pole. This stickiness is dramatically reduced when their arms, torso and legs are covered in clothing. This is why pole athletes wear clothing that is more revealing and is done mainly for the increase in their grip on the pole. 

If you are interested in more, here’s a #SportraitStory I did with Danielle.