A.D. Drumm Images, LLC – Landscape, Portrait, and Fine Art Photography in Rochester MN Photography

This week, Riverland Community College opened their final production for the season, Picnic. I photographed the show during their final dress rehearsal.

One of the things I enjoy about shooting these shows at the college is the variety of the productions. Here’s a play by William Inge from the early 1950s. It was the show in which the unknown Paul Newman made his Broadway debut. Compare this to the show that opened their season, The Rocky Horror Show.

The action takes place in a single set, the yard outside a house. The stage at Riverland is configurable, and for this show it’s set thrust out with some seating one either side of the stage. This gives the players lots of room in which to work. At times, it allowed me to be nearly on top of the actors. Other times, they were fully upstage and quite a ways from my position.

That provides some challenges but also some opportunities to get up close and personal with the characters on occasion. The lighting from a photography point of view was fairly harsh – the norm for stage lighting. Musicals tend to have spotlights which punch up this contrast even more, so a non-musical is usually a bit easier to shoot. But you end up paying more attention to the hot spots and fall-off areas: where lights are particularly bright or particularly less bright than the surroundings.

We can level that out somewhat in post. I may spend more or less time on a particular image depending on how much it moves me. I have multiple goals with these theatre shoots. I’m trying to document the show – the actors, the sets, the production in general. And that drives many of the photographs I make. But I’m also looking for those images that show some of the emotion of the show, shots that tell a story. They may bring the viewer back to the show, to the story as it was unfolding, if he or she knows that story. But it may tell its own story, too, for someone who knows nothing of the show. We have people, gesture, emotion. So all the makings for an interesting photograph. I always hope to find one or two of those among the set.

The show runs again tonight and tomorrow, May 4.