It Snows Every Year in Austin

I'm a board member with Ballet Austin, which has become one of the best regional professional ballet companies in the country. One of my jobs with the ballet is to recruit VIPs to be Mother Ginger-- the figure on top of a huge skirt that is rolled out onstage during the second act. We've used people like Lance Armstrong, Michael Dell, US Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Governor Ann Richards, Congressman Lloyd Doggett, singers like Ray Benson, Kinky Friedman, Pat Green, and Shawn Colvin, a General and the Sgt. Major from Fort Hood and many more. Since I'm already backstage to host them, I often snap photos. You can't use a flash, so the images come out blurred--which sometimes works to your advantage.

I took this one during the Snow Queen sequence a few years ago and it's still one of my favorites. Both the lighting and the composition clicked. I especially like how the dancers in the foreground go from dark to medium to lightest.