Rochester Civic Theatre opened their 2014-2015 season with a Broadway favorite, RENT. This show has a big following, so there was ample talent on stage. I shot this show once before in Austin at Riverland Community College.
The show seems to demand a high technical level, so the lighting was fairly dramatic for both productions, which certainly benefits me. Ben Hain, who did the lighting for last year’s Les Mis production again tackled the lighting and again gave us an excellent show.
Ben uses some LED lighting which is gaining popularity. It is somewhat more challenging for production photos. I’ve been trying to figure out why, and I think I have a reasonable hypothesis. Unlike tungsten lighting through gels, certain LED colors are very pure. Gels are good, but they’re not perfect, so I believe the spectrum from, say, a blue gel’d light is just not nearly as pure blue as a blue LED. The broader spectrum from tungsten gives our digital sensors a bit more to work with in assembling the image. That’s my guess, anyway.
For me, it’s more a curiosity than a real problem. I know photographers who worry about blue or green or red skin tones in stage or concert images, but I like the effect in general and think it provides more of the flavor and environment of the production. I really don’t want to mess with the lighting design – I want to embrace it instead.
Not all of a show will be lit with colored lighting anyway. With a show like this, we do often have the players in more neutral lighting and background colored to produce a mood.
With a very overtly colored scene, you just have to watch the saturation and maybe dial it down just a tad. I’m trying to produce a faithful representation without the screaming color the camera will sometimes generate.
I used to shoot RCT’s shows with staged poses. We’d work backward through the show and shoot various scenes the director especially wanted to capture. It’s a method that has its advantages.
But as I’ve been shooting lots of shows live, I’ve started doing the same at RCT. In addition to giving us a bit more spontaneity, it’s also tons easier for the cast and crew. I’ll shoot during a rehearsal, so they can just do their thing, ignore me, and not have to show up early one performance night so we can get the photos.
Well, it turns out RENT was doing their dress rehearsals while Lynne and I were in Italy. We had to miss opening night, too, which is unusual for us.
So, it was back to the old ways for this show. But the cast did great in acting for the camera. I think we got a successful set of photographs to document the production.
Next up at the Civic is a musical version of Miracle on 34th Street. For that show, Lynne will be back on stage. It will be fun seeing her doing what she loves!
