Dancing with the stars

In her 2011 Playboy cover and pictorial, Smirnoff told Playboy: "As a dancer I've always embraced my body. I'm trilled to show off my strong, toned physique in the pages of Playboy and celebrate my sexiness. Sexy is the confident energy a person produces. Sexy is the comfortable feeling of being who you are. I am fearless and love the adrenaline rush." Playboy Publisher Hugh Hefner called Smirnoff's pictorial "t". Smirnoff is best know for her 18 appearances 0n the television series, "Dancing With The Stars", which she won the the show's Season 13. She was photographed on the Sony movie lot's cabaret set for the 2011 movie "Burlesque". Smirnoff is a professional Ballroom Dancer, having won the US Nationals, The Dutch Open, the US National Professional Championship five times each, and was the only woman to reach the British Professional Finals with four different partners. The photograph is one single 35mm frame. It is not a composite, nor was it retouched in Photoshop. The image was created with strobes to stop the action, and tungsten "hot lights" for the movement. The stage lights are incandescent light bulbs. The trick is to balance all the different types of light sources...their intensity and color balance as Karina dances across the dark stage.