There is nothing more satisfying to me than a photo session with my daughter. Viola Bella Pantuso is enjoying her second year as a professional ballerina with the Royal Ballet Company in London. Modeling is part of the professional life of a dancer and it's something that she has been doing from an early age. So perhaps it's this familiarity and experience that makes performing for the camera so comfortable for her. Whatever it is, Viola has an uncanny ability to become part of the environment around her while on a shoot. She instinctively works off of her immediate surroundings, like the architecture, to amplify shapes, angles, spaces and the atmosphere around her. Then, she creates a photographic performance based on her emotional interpretations of that space and does so within just a few precious moments. I’ve experienced this with her over and over again.

And, if there happens to be a barre involved, it all becomes, as they say, wonderfully and properly brilliant.