It was only last year, but Kelley Dallas is already a little nostalgic for her daughter’s time with her violin. Emmy, pictured here practising on her bedroom floor in the mid-morning light, had begun playing aged six, three years earlier.
The Colorado-based photographer has developed a careful eye for these shafts of light now, their ability to highlight a subject becoming something of a signature style for her. “My eye has developed to seek these slices out, but they create extremes that an iPhone automatically tries to balance out,” Dallas says. “I didn’t want that, so I manually brought down the exposure to correctly capture the shaft of light and to let the rest fall into shadow.”
Her advice for fellow parents hoping to photograph their own child in a similarly poignant moment is to resist the temptation to ask them to pose. “Just capture what they’re doing,” Dallas says. “Think of the little things that speak to their personality, that tell a story of who they are. It’s a more documentarian, more authentic approach.”
With Emmy having since quit the instrument – these days she prefers volleyball and arts and crafts – Dallas is grateful to have taken this photograph when she did. “It speaks to capturing a brief, fleeting moment in time,” she says.
